Catharsis isn’t a wound being excavated from childhood.

I think you have to have your own expectations of yourself and your own sense of purpose and your own intrinsic pleasure in the task. If you don't, you will drive yourself off a cliff because your fortunes will rise and fall, and if you identify too closely with that, you really will go insane.

Sitting down with younger women writers and saying, "This is what I do and you can do this" is hugely important.

I don't read a word that's written about me. I don't read my own interviews. I don't read reviews. I think it would drive me insane.

I would never be essentialist about sexuality and structure, but I do think there's a way in which this male-arc has been talked about as the only structure, and kind of a stand-in for even the word structure, instead of looking at other forms.

Art is a way of freezing time, or extending time. ... It's another way to bridge the gaps between us.

Have you ever been so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved's hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?