If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.

If you don't have obsessions, don't write. my characters are obsessed.

If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin.

I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer.

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.