I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

The arena of women's lives is somewhat more intimate. If a woman goes out with an incredibly attractive man and they break up, that woman is not more attractive to men. It's completely irrelevant to them. That's an example of the way women's minds work.

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

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

The past is always tense, the future perfect.