I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk.

I was reading all these male writers who were doing wild and wonderful things. It gave me permission to experiment.

I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

I feel the fear touches on something deeper. A sense perhaps of, "My life is speeding past me and I can't get a handle on it."

I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.

The ideal for me is to mix it up. When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre.

Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can't see.