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" Somebody once said to me, 'If you want to be understood, don't write fiction.' "

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" Something like riding a horse - which I've recently started doing - requires courage, especially for me, as I started out being actually scared of horses. "

" I think it actually started in my late thirties. I started changing psychologically, and it was difficult to translate that into my writing. "

" Married, you're basically part of the herd, and that makes life easier in a lot of ways in terms of social support. But if you're not by nature a herd animal, you start to feel like you're passing. "

" Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness. "

" If anything is scary about my writing, it's that it's the product of a very particular vision and doesn't reference common speech that heavily. By 'common speech,' I don't mean language as much as an agreed-on way of seeing, or a shorthand. "

" I wasn't ever anybody who had a political thing against marriage, but I just thought, 'Why would I want to do that?' "

" I remember back in the '90s, I used to feel criticized by women for not having children. Like there must be something wrong with me. "

" I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion. "

" I believe that the truest parts of people can be buried, and for many different reasons. "

" Sometimes I decide I don't want to write because it isn't the thing for me to be doing right then, and I go do something else. "

" There is a sense in which we have - like, I go in to teach a class; I may be somewhat different than I would be talking to you, although it's related because it's public. I'm very different with my roommate or my lover or my cats. But I don't know if that means you're acting, really, if you're being truthful. "

" Perhaps it should be obvious: Adultery is a social threat that arouses raw anger and fear, which the bellicose then need to discharge rather than merely feel, traditionally on the philandering wife or the female home-wrecker. "

" The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility. "

" I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful. "

" I loved to read and would read anything that roused my interest, whether it was below my age level or above it, even if I could barely make sense of it. "

" It's scary to me to watch the world around us get less and less physical while in the imaginary world of pop culture, aggressive impulses and fear reactions are floridly, furiously stoked and indulged. "

" My parents had met in high school and married right after my father came back from World War II. They honeymooned in Paris and returned to that city when my father, in college on the G.I. Bill, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. "

" Not being locked into one set of feelings, which you run the risk of mistaking for the truth, you have greater and more intense access to all feeling states, including those you would never choose to act out. "

" I think that with the proliferation of writing programs, people tend to forget that you also have to get used to working alone, and you have to be your own support. "

" I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write. "

" At 16, I was in Toronto and very shy and not hanging around with anyone who was intellectual in the slightest, so I didn't really have the means to discuss what I was seeing and feeling. "

" I feel I'm often misunderstood by critics. People project a lot or exaggerate the subjective fragility simply because it's frightening to them. "

" People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn't because they're trying to fool you or because they're hypocrites. It's because they badly want to be that thing, and so they'll try to be it. "

" One hot summer night in San Francisco, roughly 10 years ago, I was sitting in a crowded Pacific Heights restaurant when Alice Adams walked in with a man. She was about 60 at the time, and she was wearing a skirt that fell an inch or so above her knees and flat heels without stockings. "

" Stories are the rich, unseen underlayer of the most ordinary moments. "

" I didn't like horses when I was a kid. "

" I used to start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to start in the early afternoon and work until about 3, go do errands, have dinner, and then write for a few more hours in the evening. "

" The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity. "

" People say that if you talk too much about sex, you take away the mystery. I say, if you're somebody who likes to talk, talk all you want - it's not listening. You will never take away the mystery. "

" Writing requires an intense inner focus, and sometimes you need to express outward, physically or socially. "