Sometimes the taproot and the vines are far apart. Like English and the Asian poem.

No matter how sheltered [my students] are, no matter how their parents try to do right by them, every single one of them, you know, every single one of us, that's what we all face. And so it's made me - that's the one change I've marked in myself - it's made me change in the way I relate to my students. I've become a different teacher in that way.

The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.

After Fifty Shades of Grey, I think my writing is pretty tame, isn't it?

Note, the reply will not be "I write," an act that I have, after all, been performing since I was nine.

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

In publishing books and winning awards, it's like you've enjoyed this meal, you know, two months ago. How long can you be nourished by thinking about it? You've already ingested it, and you've excreted it, and that was two months ago. You had this fabulous meal. It's not going to keep you satiated today. You have to go out and get your next meal. For me, that's writing. I have to go out and hunt my next meal.