I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.

I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

I am cheerful. I don't know if I'm happy. There is a difference, you know.

The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world.

Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject.

Once one pays some attention to something, then you begin to see evidence of it everywhere.