The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness.

She smoked because she craved something to do with her hands, that delicate interplay of light and cup and first inhale. Craved the repetition of it. It was so difficult sometimes to be still in a room, alone with oneself. To bare oneself to the lonely.

I think the mad wives and mistresses are my hysterics - even the fictionalized ones. I want to trace how they were silenced, I want to find for them an escape route.

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

I am worthy of being read. I mean, one has to be convinced of one's genius.

I think the online space can be a free space, in that we are not reliant online on the publishing industry or readers who just don't get it.