As we change, the way in which we are perceived in terms of our relevance, our value, our beauty, and sexual potency changes.

Things, very strange things, happen in folktales and there is never much attention given to the whys and wherefores.

But every age deserves its fashion and its forms, and no one can control what survives.

Why did people try to shush trouble away as if it were an unruly child?

Writing, for me, is always a dance between the critical part of my brain and the subconscious.

I guess I'm drawn to stories of people whose physicality puts them on the outside of things in order to explore the ways in which an identity is formed around these prevailing attitudes.

I never know where I'm headed when I'm working on a book.

We are like flowers always reaching up towards some shred of light. I find this wondrous, nearly magical, certainly brave.

I'm interested in endurance. People persist in the face of the most excruciating hardships.

We grow, we mature, some of us give birth, we age, we die.

The language of the novel differs from the just-the-facts language of the old tales. It's robust and earthy, sometimes even baroque.

You are or become what you think you are

Music is the language of love, nature, and eternity.

When a marriage works, nothing on earth can take its place.

Evaluation by others is not a guide for me.

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.

Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.

Old people think young people haven't learned about love. Young people think old people have forgotten about love.

The best we can do is lean towards the light.

Well I've seen travel in many waysI've traveled in cars and old subwaysBut in Birmingham some people choseTo fly down the street from a fire hose.Doin' some hard travelin'...from hydrants of plenty.

The tragedy of love is indifference.