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.

The art of fiction is one of constant seduction. You must persuade the reader on page 1 to start reading - on page 50, or page 150 and yes, on page 850.

Shall I tell you something I've been noticing? The mistrust this society has for women. All kinds of experts and officials are terrified because so many women are working. They really think that women have to be coerced into having babies and raising kids.

Any life is lived in a particular time and place. Every life is impacted by the family's socio-economic circumstances, and, in later life, by the person's.

Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out.

Now that I am in my forties, she [my mother] tells me I'm beautiful; now that I am in my forties, she sends me presents and we have the long, personal and even remarkably honest phone calls I always wanted so intensely I forbade myself to imagine them. How strange. Perhaps Shaw was correct and if we lived to be several hundred years old, we would finally work it all out. I am deeply grateful. With my poems, I finally won even my mother. The longest wooing of my life.

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the rooms.