I think American literature is in a tedious place, horrible place. I can't even engage with it.

Feminism now seems to be defined as success is defined: as being as good at capitalism as men are. I feel very estranged from it.

I understand maybe some people are more impressionable than my hard, cynical self, but maybe they need to figure out how to be less of that.

I was twenty-one when I was hired by Planned Parenthood. It was my first work experience outside of either temping or working for my father at his store.

Once you leave, you're no longer of that country, but you are never actually of the country that you go to, and if you go back, you're not anywhere. You never belong to anything.

American culture never necessarily made sense to me, but they should warn you: leaving comes with a huge sense of alienation that never goes away.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

You don't have to go to New York and you don't have to go to LA or London. Go somewhere cheap. Go somewhere with free art museums and then just go to art museums.

Go to a place and just send out emails. That's my entire life. I go to countries and I ask, "Who would I know who lives here?" Not even do I know, but who exists and is on the planet.

There's this resistance to actually talking to people who are smarter than you about things and I don't know why that is.

I knew my motivations for going to each place and what I was looking for. If I don't do that then I generally don't write about my travels.

Like a floating feather in the air, take life very lightly and joyfully adjust to the flow of life.

Life isn't simple. Literature shouldn't be either.

Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.

I've had to deal with all different types of situations - positive and negative and extremes of both.

I've learned... That life is tough, but I'm tougher.

We cannot all hope to combine the pleasing qualities of good looks, brains, and eloquence.

If it doesn't seem like I'm working hard sometimes, that's someone else's problem.

The only person that I'm really feeling - because she has an identity of her own, even though she has listened to Mary J. Blige - is Jill Scott.

I want to get non-aerosol mace, you just rub it in. "Dude who is attacking me - come a little closer!"

When your arms are bigger than your head, something is wrong.