Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

Hey, religious nuts! Please do not grow up. Just go up!

Canadian politics in British Columbia is an adventure on the Prairies a cause in Ontario a business in Quebec a religion in the Maritimes a disease.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

I love any and all situations where you celebrate creativity.

Honestly, Hillary Clinton should be locked up.

We're at a period where our society is at the end of a cycle, where all the sudden the values that we were told were important don't seem to have that much importance nowadays.

I am so excited about Canadians ruling the world.

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.