“I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs.”

“I spent the rest of my day in someone else’s story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs. I felt like a circus knife thrower’s target. If I held my mind immobile, I might avoid being hit by the blades whizzing by my head.”

“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”

“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”

“Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will comfort and enlighten someone else. What then is my responsibility? What am I to restrain? What am I to fear and alter--my own nakedness or the grief of the reader? I want my stories to be so good they are unforgettable; to make my ideas live and my own terrors real for people I will never meet. It is a completely amoral writer's lust. If we begin to agree that some ideas are too dangerous, too bad to invite inside our heads, then we stop the storyteller completely. We silence everyone who would tell us something that might be painful in our vulnerable moments.”

“I try to teach my students that books are a mirror, reflecting their own lives, and a window, giving them a peek into someone else's.”