I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.

Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception.

They [my stories] evolve. If they're tightly constructed, it's because they're revised constantly as I move forward each day. That's where the structure inheres. It's all organic.

Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.

A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine, and it is in the sphere of quiet homes-not elsewhere-I believe that a woman can best rule and save the world.

You don't write the kitchen scene just because you're eager to do it that day and you're avoiding something else. I think it has to move slowly, step by step. I pride myself on the construction of my stories but it's not something I impose on them.

All writers are egomaniacal, manic-depressive, drug-addicted alcoholics. You want to have that fix again.