If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

I think the book you always like best is the one you're about to write.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.