Early in the phase of being in a female body, there's all this desire that comes at you, a lot of it hostile, a lot of it dangerous, a lot of it ruinous.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

I sometimes think that we expect too much resolution in this world.

I do some messing around with things, not necessarily about me but about place and people and the things around.

I grew up flying over oceans and moving and sailing.

There's a lot of water in everything I've ever written. There's always oceans and pools.

You can sometimes find something good on the other side of doing something very, very painful.

In order to have a real life of any romance, there has to be a level of fantasy.

I don't think you can have an imagination without having fantasy, and you can't have that rich a life without an imagination.

That's what perfect means. You're finished.

I've always wanted to figure out how to do a walking story. I'd never figured out how to do one and have it work or be interesting or have anything that it's about.

Do not allow fear to bind you up, dear one. You will only lose what you already have. Accept what is given now. ~Yeshua

Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Art it seems to me should simplify.

A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.

Nothing can save something that is not meant to be, no matter how hard you try.

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about...things that are past, it is needless to blame.

Don't say, "If I could, I would." Say, "If I can, I will."

I don't come down on any simple place as a deletionist or a completionist.

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.