Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

Being a girl didn't really affect me until I entered junior high and had to wear skirts, curl my hair, and even get used to panty hose. However, my hatred of panty hose helped make me a writer who only wears comfortable clothes. I've successfully avoided panty hose for most of my life.

I think one of the reasons to be here on earth is to finally be who we are, at all times - to know and be predictable to ourselves.

Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge, no fact can deflect their point of view.

Now I'm sixty-one... sixty-two, pretty soon. It's a really interesting age. Now we have women of your age, and coming up, and all these fantastic writers, who have managed to have their children but continue with their art, their work. I think women are doing the most interesting writing right now, the most interesting art. I see everything through this lens, of women finally taking their place in the world. Their true place. And it's very, very exciting to me.