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.

I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice.

Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tears.

If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings and loops. Each life is one short word slowly uttered.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

I did not choose solitude. Who would? It came on me like a kind of vocation, demanding an effort that married women can't picture.