Creative work is incredibly difficult, and that is where the tests lie. |
Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life. |
I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. |
To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language. |
You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking? |
If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you. |
We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then. |
To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing. You have to risk it. |
The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home. |
I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame. |
I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed. |
Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places. |
Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me. |
The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct. |
Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create. |
With animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy. |
You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play. |
My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere. |
I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you. |
I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen. |