I'd be flattered if someone said that my work is "too weird" for them. I value the uncompliment.

Look. All books are weird when you think about it.... It goes without saying that real life is also weird.

The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.

I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of my wives was my gunner. I came back here, after many adventures, and once, when I'd been drinking, donated the funeral carpet to the national museum. When I was sober again, I asked for it back, but they claimed not to know what I was talking about.

Becka might have been average in L.A., but average in L.A. is Queen of Mars in the visiting room of a federal penitentiary in North Carolina.

Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.