What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else?
Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.
A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.
The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.
Writing requires an intense inner focus, and sometimes you need to express outward, physically or socially.
I think that's the real reason, sometimes, that people talk about my stories as being scary, because if you compare what goes on in my stories to what goes on in popular movies and popular songs, it's very mild.
My first and strongest memories about perfume come from childhood, from my mother, and they are a complex blend of her private and public selves.
I think people try to make the most of their time on Earth and also to 'fix' their time on Earth.
I believe that the truest parts of people can be buried, and for many different reasons.
Not being locked into one set of feelings, which you run the risk of mistaking for the truth, you have greater and more intense access to all feeling states, including those you would never choose to act out.
I think that with the proliferation of writing programs, people tend to forget that you also have to get used to working alone, and you have to be your own support.
Stories are the rich, unseen underlayer of the most ordinary moments.
I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful.
I remember back in the '90s, I used to feel criticized by women for not having children. Like there must be something wrong with me.
Anne Frank's diary made a very big impression on me at age 12 or so.
People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn't because they're trying to fool you or because they're hypocrites. It's because they badly want to be that thing, and so they'll try to be it.
I used to start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to start in the early afternoon and work until about 3, go do errands, have dinner, and then write for a few more hours in the evening.
I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write.
The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility.
When I was writing 'Bad Behavior,' I was very, very quiet. I would just sit there and listen to people. And if I was out in public, I was usually quiet, and people tended to assume I was stupid because I was a young, pretty girl who's quiet.
