It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.

Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.

Good fiction challenges us as much as it entertains and these days, we could do with both of these things.

Feminism is definitely a part of everything I do.

Feminism has neglected the needs of woman of color and people of color in general. But I don't think it means that we should overlook feminism as having nothing valuable to contribute.

I think hunger is a natural state of being for most people. I mean, hunger is a desire - and you don't only have physical hunger, you have emotional hunger. A lot of my hungers are, in fact, emotional. I think a lot of fat people's hungers are emotional. There are things we very much want, and it can be so difficult to satisfy those hungers. Yet we try. We try so hard.

Intellectually, I know I am worthy, however arbitrary a thing worthiness is, and have always been worthy.