Shared laughter is erotic too.

Where I came from, the nights I had wandered and survived scared them, and where I would go they never imagined.

I don't even remember what Mother and I quarreled about: it is a continual quarrel that began when I reached puberty.

The mind wraps itself around a poem. It is almost sensual, particularly if you work on a computer. You can turn the poem round and about and upside down, dancing with it a kind of bolero of two snakes twisting and coiling, until the poem has found its right and proper shape.

I think having a great range of experiences in my life had helped me as a writer, particularly a writer of fiction. I have known a great many different sorts of people in different situations, and I have a notion how very well of badly people can behave in times of stress or danger or violence.

Memory in Greek mythology is the mother of the muses, and it is so for me. Both personal and societal memory move me strongly, and that is one of the sources of my writing.

Remember that every son had a mother whose beloved son he was, and every woman had a mother whose beloved son she wasn't.