It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.

I was brought up with the sense that I was absolutely no different from my brothers. I went to college thinking I was absolutely no different from the men in college. But that's not true. I'm fundamentally different. The problem was not being able to understand difference and equality at the same time. It's something that we can't seem to comprehend. You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. It's a mistake.

I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.

People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because they are repeated in so many exploitative contexts - adverts and TV shows and political speeches.

It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy