Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

My childhood was as conventional as you could get.

Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be so much more thrilling when you're actively miserable.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.

Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live. I chose community.

I'm always hungry for people.

I'm feminist in that I believe that there should be equality between men and women. I get deeply frustrated on a daily basis by the enormous gender divide in the U.S. literary world. But I don't know how to deal with it, so I don't tend to say much about it.