If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.

My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.