Don't blindly follow any leader.

The first money I ever had was when I received an award from the American Association of University Women.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career.

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there.

I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.