A Novel Is Written Not

Cats, I Always Think, Only Jump Into Your Lap To Check If You Are Cold Enough, Yet, To Eat.

For 10 Or 11 Years, I Had My Kids, I Wrote Four Or Five Books, And I Was Working All The Damn Time.

If You Try To Control It Too Much, The Book Is Dead. You Have To Let It Fall Apart Quite Early On And Let It Start Doing Its Own Thing. And That Takes Nerve, Not To Panic That The Book You Were Going To Write Is Not The Book You Will Have At The End Of The Day.

There Are So Few People Given Us To Love. I Want To Tell My Daughters This, That Each Time You Fall In Love It Is Important, Even At Nineteen. Especially At Nineteen. And If You Can, At Nineteen, Count The People You Love On One Hand, You Will Not, At Forty, Have Run Out Of Fingers On The Other. There Are So Few People Given Us To Love And They All Stick.

I Think It’s Very Important To Write A Demythologized Woman Character. My Characters Are Flawed. They Are No Better Than They Should Be.