When I get too worked up about things I have always escaped into catatonia.

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

I think that writing and publishing are different. I think I will always write; I might not always publish. The idea of not publishing is wonderful!

I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.

I always remember my childhood as traumatic, for various reasons; I always felt alienated, outside.

My writing has always been considered extremely important, even though I make slim-to-no money at it.

I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect.