Once you stop talking about the female body empowering itself vis-à-vis male forays or invasions or male demands or the necessity to respond to husband and son to bring the issue down to a more concrete level, the body is a different manifestation physically.

In some ways it is absurd for me to assert, counter to evidence, that I have not been writing.

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

With so many brothers, I could always find a pair of shorts to borrow and run around in.

I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."

I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.