I had some fears as a kid, but I was also relatively fearless. Maybe that's a result of living half the time in reality and the other half in fantasy.

Last year's troubles, They shine up so prettily, They gleam with a lustre they don't have today.

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that theres a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

Kindness to me is only powerful if it has the cruel streak behind it. If someone is kind all the time under all circumstances, they're just simple-minded. Kindness is only worth something if you have the cruel streak to back it up.

When I was pregnant, I felt filled with life, and I felt really happy. I ate well, and I slept well. I felt much more useful than I'd ever felt before.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

I was always inventing characters and making up stories.