The Dutch and the English, former competitors for world dominance, taught me the wisdom of waiting as well as withholding.

Reading gave me great comfort and pleasure. When I started being able to write, around seven or eight, I wanted to be able to do that myself, to create that other world.

Now that I'm an older woman, I'm so much more aware of the changes - almost too aware. I feel sorry for being so dismissive. You have to think about what you're thinking about and realize that you're thinking it.

I'm very interested in animal behavior, and the relationship of human beings to other animal behavior.

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition. I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence. Not beautiful in the sense of "oh it's flowy" but in the sense that it really does what it's supposed to do, it what I want it to say.

You can think everything is dire, but you act as if there's possibility. I see children coming into the world as an expression of this. Sometimes, not always - it can just be somebody that wasn't on the birth control pill or didn't have access to abortion. But I usually see a wanted child as a sign of optimism, and I like that.