I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want to relate.

Being in Europe had helped me unlearn some of what I'd been taught or unconsciously believed.

People in the upper classes can just as easily be indifferent to their own body, or treat themselves as badly, as people who don't have the money. There are always differences among differences.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

I like to invent the dialogue that I want to have heard.

I also think that the issue of doubt and uncertainty is always a good thing and I question why I believe what I believe. I see things changing all around me and I don't feel devoted to a form. If I'm devoted to anything, I'm devoted to the attempt - the "trying" to do something.

I'd studied English literature and American history, but the English literature, which I thought was going to be helpful to me in an immediate way, was the opposite. So I had to un-think a lot of things and move out of my own head, and I learned a lot. It was like graduate school, but an un-graduate school or an un-school.