I can be very in my head, but I don't trust my head all that much. My head is crazy. My head will talk to itself all day and all night if I let it. And my heart is less nutty, but it's kind of like an overexcited child. I don't trust my heart all that much either. My body is like a good horse. I trust my body.

The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.

I think if a woman is very happy with herself and at ease with her choices, it goes a long way toward making other people feel at ease with her.

I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.

Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

People still think that a woman who doesn't have children or doesn't want children is really lacking in something. I've seen this over and over again in my life. I've had this thinking used against me repeatedly. I remember I had a therapist once, and I brought this up, and she said, "Well, I think women who don't have children feel very self-critical. They feel bad, so they think other people are critical in that way."

When my first book came out, it was very disorienting. My health went south. I didn't know how to relate to people. I thought, "Now I have this way to be in the world that's going to be wonderful. It'll be like driving a great car, really streamlined." But it actually was difficult because, if you have a public persona, something you don't fully have control over, it's more like being in a car with controls you don't really understand.