I don't know what a natural thought process is.

When you free women so they can choose to have or not to have, or to conceive - that's something that, for millennia, women couldn't do. Biology was, in many ways, destiny. We wouldn't be talking about gender if women could not control their pregnancies.

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.

Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.

People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.

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.

Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.