When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.

There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway.

I find teaching - I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient.

I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.