I did not always know I would be a writer. Until I had a room of my own, I did not write much at all - no more than any other child who read a lot of books. I began to write fiction and poetry when I first had a room that was truly my own with a door that shut and some measure, however fragile, of privacy.

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment.

Whatever is not an energy source, is an energy sink.

The price of seeing is silence.

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.

One trouble: to be a professional anything in the United States is to think of oneself as an expert and one's ideas as semisacred, and to treat others in a certain way - professionally.

Listening is terribly important if you want to understand anything about people. You listen to what they say and how they say it, what they share and what they are reticent about, what they tell truthfully and what they lie about, what they hope for and what they fear, what they are proud of, what they are ashamed of. If you don't pay attention to other people, how can you understand their choices through time and how their stories come out?