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" There's so much anxiety about being understood - and being understood through what you wear. "

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" The reason I write is because I have questions. What I don't want is for people to forget that I'm a novelist and think I'm a sociologist or something. I don't want to feel trapped into a corner where I don't belong. "

" It took me five or six years to write 'How Should a Person Be?' and there were many times when I felt discouraged. "

" I just always try to respond to what I'm most interested in at the moment - that hasn't changed. "

" I've written about women's lives, and I just want to write about them from being a woman. I don't need feminism on top of that when I'm writing. "

" I remember going over proofs of this book - my first book - back in 2001, in a bar in Toronto called the 'Victory Cafe', and thinking sadly to myself, 'This is a very good manuscript but not a very good book.' I don't know what I meant by that, but I was pretty heartbroken and sure it was true. "

" For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic. "

" I think that part of the reason I like collaboration so much is because it's something unexpected coming in, and you have to stretch yourself to absorb it. "

" A woman will always be made to feel like a criminal, whatever choice she makes, however hard she tries. Mothers feel like criminals. Non-mothers do, too. "

" I believe there's a platonic ideal for every book that is written, like there's the perfect version of the book somewhere in the ether, and my job is to find what that book is through my editing. "

" Toronto is my home. It's where my family is. I think I feel an obligation to be within subway distance of the people who raised me. "

" You don't go to tarot readers or psychics when everything's going well. It's always evidence of rock-bottom. "

" Trying to live the image of the life which you have in your head... it's really hard not to do that, but I do think maybe it's cheating. "

" Growing up, I never knew that Raffi turned down celebrity endorsements, TV shows, and specials and refused to make merchandise, but it makes sense given how I think about him: My memories are limited to his voice through the record player and the album covers I stared at. "

" Women without children can help mothers, and we can just be all in this together. "

" Some of my favorite experiences of art are when I am there but my attention has wandered. I think stimulation is overrated, and persistent stimulation is exhausting. You sometimes have to be banal, tedious: make the rhythm go soft and slow, give the mind a rest. "

" Renown is something people have always wanted, but maybe what's modern is that it's considered a virtue, this desire, rather than a vice. I might be wrong about this. "

" Writing, for me, when I'm writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I'm writing, the character or self I'm writing about and my whole self - when I began the book - become entwined. It's soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I'm trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts. "

" Raffi doesn't have any grand theories about why his music has been so successful, but he credits a group called the Babysitters as early inspiration. "

" Just because you are alive does not mean you have to give life. "

" There's something about a woman's life choices that invites commentary, whether it's been invited or not. "

" Raffi is arguably the world's most famous children's singer. "

" The main problem I've always had with fashion media is that women are encouraged to copy other women. "

" I remember very vividly a little plaid dress on which my father sewed all these hanging beads, little horses and stuff. It was my favourite thing ever. I had it when I was four, and I kept it until I was 12, when I gave it to the little neighbour girl. For years, I regretted giving it to her, even though I had no use for it. "

" I don't think 'Motherhood' is a map for women. I would never say that it's a template for every woman in response to her biology. "

" Only in our failures are we absolutely alone. Only in the pursuit of failure can a person really be free. Losers may be the avant garde of the modern age. "

" Fiction is a way for writers to preserve their friendships and their romances! "

" I didn't wander into motherhood or nonmotherhood unconsciously, recklessly. I gave it due consideration. "

" There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the supposed life cycle. "

" There's so much to learn in writing and in life, and in any particular era in one's life, it seems like a few concerns have to be dealt with at once or else something really bad could happen. Writing seems like the place to deal with those concerns. "