Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel.

Every artist creates with open eyes what she sees in her dream.

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.

Purple as tulips in May, mauve into lush velvet, purple as the stain blackberries leave on the lips, on the hands, the purple of ripe grapes sunlit and warm as flesh.

We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways.

Grandmother Hannah comes to me at Pesach and when I am lighting the sabbath candles. The sweet wine in the cup has her breath.... a little winter no spring can melt.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling; she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she enacts it as the wind fills a sail.