“I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.”

“I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.”

“I'm Legs Sadovsky I'm FOXFIRE I don't fuck around with guys.”

“I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.”

“I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.”

“At such rare times you can feel the electrically charged neurons of the prefrontal brain realigning themselves like iron fillings drawn by a magnet. ”

“The fact was that the woman lived the life she chose, she was happy in that life and it was no one's business after all but her own, my uncle's face darkening with blood as he spoke, my mother's fair fine skin pink as if smarting yet still I persisted, for I thought it such a horror, such a grief, yes and an embarrassment too, I said, "She's made a prison of this house, it's like she's a nun, it must be to punish herself," and my mother said quietly, angrily, "You don't know - what do you know! People do what they want to do.”