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

Why are you so interested in amoebas?" "Oh, they're immortal," he said, "and sort of shapeless and flexible. Being a person is getting too complicated.

There are some women who seem to be born without fear, just as there are people who are born without the ability to feel pain ... Providence appears to protect such women, maybe out of astonishment.

Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.

People talking about politics usually start from the ass end backwards in that they think you have a political agenda, and then you make your work fit that cookie cutter. It's the other way around. One works by simple observation, looking into things. It's usually called insight and out of that comes your view - not that you have the view first and then squash everything to make it fit. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

[My favorite word is] and. It is so hopeful.