I think people try to make the most of their time on earth and also to fix their time on earth. They try to fix external verities, things that are true for all time, ideas that are true for all time: Rome will last forever! America will last forever! Beauty, as defined by the fashion industry, is one of those things—this is beautiful. This will always be beautiful—and hold it in a way that has some sense of permanence about it, and absoluteness. And yet it’s not.

I remember the time I said, 'I don't think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.'

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.

I think the closest thing I can come to defining what that vital thing is for me - is that there's a sort of soul-quality in writing, if it's any good. It has a spirit or an energy to it that is very integral to who the writer is on a deep level. It's almost a cellular thing. It takes place in the cells of the writing, and it is what makes it alive or not.

I think women who are very creative and giving members of society can be respected and accepted.

Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw.

I think people hold back all kinds of things. And in a way, they just want to be nice. They want to be civil.