“When I don't get enough sleep, I am cranky, vulnerable to headaches, and my concentration is poor.”

“If something's not working, it's wonderful to have a reader you can trust to say, 'Actually, you've gone off the deep end here'.”

“Writers are in control of editing processes - making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.”

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

“Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.”

“We are all dying one by one. We all smell of mortality, and we can't wash it off.”

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

“I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.”