We tend to think of orphans as being the protagonist of stories we read when we're kids, and yet here you are: you're an adult, you're supposed to manage, you're supposed to get over it, you're supposed to go on with your life, and you feel like a lost child.

I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet.

I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me.

I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.

I find myself using Spanish words much more now that I'm older, and I guess I have the authority to do it in public spaces in ways that I felt I couldn't when I was teaching here fifteen years ago.