I Have A Terrible Memory.

I Want Hard Stories, I Demand Them From Myself. Hard Stories Are Worth The Difficulty. It Seems To Me The Only Way I Have Forgiven Anything, Understood Anything, Is Through That Process Of Opening Up To My Own Terror And Pain And Reexamining It, Re-creating It In The Story, And Making It Something Different, Making It Meaningful - Even If The Meaning Is Only In The Act Of The Telling.

It's Fun To Tease People About Where Fiction And Life Intersect.

I'm Still Very Blunt: If You Want To Be A Writer, Get A Day Job. The Fact That I Have Actually Been Able To Make A Living At It Is Astonishing.

For Years And Years, I Convinced Myself That I Was Unbreakable, An Animal With An Animal Strength Or Something Not Human At All. Me, I Told People, I Take Damage Like A Wall, A Brick Wall That Never Falls Down, Never Feels Anything, Never Flinches Or Remembers. I Am One Woman But I Carry In My Body All The Stories I Have Ever Been Told, Women I Have Known, Women Who Have Taken Damage Until They Tell Themselves They Can Feel No Pain At All.

I Was Born In 1949, And By The Time I Was 10, I Figured Out That My Hope Chest Was Not Aimed In The Same Direction Everybody Else's Was. And That Life Was Going To Be Very, Very Complicated. And That I Could Either Be Provocative And Declamatory, Or Shy, Retiring And Scared.