I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.

Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.

There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.

Many writers over the centuries simply do not have the reputations they deserve because they were female, and that is an act of suppression.

We chart delusions through collective agreement.

A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.

No matter how brilliant or accomplished they are, there is something emasculating for men in being pitted against a woman. It is even more true in creative fields already considered to be "squishy" and feminine, and it's a big problem because great women have been left off the record.