Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.

Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

If you DJ reality, that is, if you make a mash-up of actual reality, you're going to end up with something that inevitably people will say, "This is feminist." Because you cannot avoid that.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'

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'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.