As a writer, I don't think it's my responsibility to make a point. I just write and hope there's someone who'll like it.

The older a woman gets, the more invisible you become.

Long after the bomb falls and you and your good deeds are gone, cockroaches will still be here, prowling the streets like armored cars.

I was like a social worker for lepers. My clients had a chunk of their body they wanted to give away; for a price I was there to receive it.

The novel is never really in the first draft. The novel really happens in the revisions.

I think it's true about people now being closer to their parents, since the '60s, really. The parents are no longer from a different planet, the 1950s ideas of American family. We could be friends with our parents. After the '60s, it wasn't like a person smoking pot was what the parents would be appalled at.

Every book I write, the media just keeps punching me in the face.