If I'm going to feel estranged and alienated and away from home I don't want anyone interrupting it to debate which berries to have in their pancakes.

I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

The past was so past it hurt.

I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.

It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.

Elevate your inside game. A negative attitude is below the horizon...a place for lonesome hearts.

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.

It's not what a man has but what a man is that's important.

Purpose is the ultimate fuel for our journey through life. When we drive with purpose we don't get tired or bored and our engines don't burn out.

A disturbing novel about dreams and wishes, a nightmarish distaff monkey's paw of a book that it's impossible to forget. Lisa Tuttle remains our preeminent chronicler of family madness and desire.

You don't learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you.

What strikes the oyster shell doesn't damage the pearl.

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.