When midlist writers are treated like dirt, I would desist were I less stubborn and less committed.

We're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb.

Shared laughter is erotic too.

I never thought of myself as explaining cats in general. I simply viewed the cats I have known as characters in my life, often as quirky and complex as the humans with whom I have spent time.

I think we validate our lives through our actions.

We live in a media soup and are constantly being programmed or are fighting that programming. Thus any truthful account of a life, every part of a life, is about society as well as an individual.

We lie in each other's arms eyes shut and fingers open and all the colors of the world pass through our bodies like strings of fire.