Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all.

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment. All that remains of my mother is what I remember and what I have written for and about her. Eventually that is all that will remain of [my husband] and me. Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we love survive however evanescently. As do we writers, saying with our life's work, Remember. Remember us. Remember me.

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.

I don't apologize for being sexually adventurous. Why not? It was often fun. When it wasn't - I didn't continue what wasn't pleasant.

The anger of the weak never goes away, Professor, it just gets a little moldy. It molds like a beautiful blue cheese in the dark, growing stronger, and more interesting. The poor and the weak die with all their anger intact and probably those angers go on growing in the dark of the grave like the hair and the nails.

I wasn't afraid of being poor; I rather took it for granted. I was good at getting by with very little. I couldn't imagine sacrificing my writing to anything else.

The ruling class isn't dissatisfied: they are healthy, well-fed, live in beauty, enjoy their own importance: fun-loving cannibals.