It’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.
Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
A writer’s duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
She did what girls generally do when they don’t feel the part: she dressed it instead.
Don’t live in a way that makes you feel dead.
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution – is not my solution.
Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
All tastes are expressions of belief.
The nineties, ecstatic decade!
I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen; suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.