I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.