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.

Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives?

That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed.

Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.

Being a mother is complicated because its not just a paternal culture making demands on you; its those internal demands and expectations that women have and are self-generated.

I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.

Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.