She became politically conscious thanks to Studs Terkel and the radio. She started reading all the books we brought home from college and was a great fan of Noam Chomsky. She was a real lefty and yet was not able to meet her dream of becoming an artist. She got drafted into motherhood big time - seven kids - and that wasn't the life that she had planned. So she opened the path so that I could be the artist that she wanted to be.

The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

There's all kinds of ways to wean yourself off of sugar - because it is like an addiction.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.