Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.

Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.