We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to others’ pain and loss.

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called.

I hope the strong women out there aren't quiet and they don't go away, because when people attack you for speaking, the best way to drive them nuts is to smile and carry on speaking, louder, more wisely, more intensely, more articulately than ever.

I never fell. I don't care what they say. I'm still doing my job, as I see it.

You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Fiction takes us to places that we would never otherwise go, and puts us behind eyes that are not our own.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician -- make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor -- make good art. IRS on your trail -- make good art. Cat exploded -- make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before -- make good art.