If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

This was my modest dream come true: unambitious flight. The kind that never even got high enough for a view.

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.

That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.

I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.

Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce