I am my mother's daughter,... I am her only novel.

Nobody can live on a bridge or plant potatoes but it is fine for comings and goings, meetings, partings and long views and a real connection to someplace else where you may in the crazy weathers of struggle how and again want to be.

My idea of Hell is to be young again.

It's really important to visit a site you are writing about. Even if you know it well, even if you have lived there, it's important to take a fresh look in terms of your characters and your story.

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.

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 don't find that writing about parts of my life had much effect except in some cases to improve my memory. To get into parts of the past I want to recall very vividly, I use a form of directed meditation.