“No more fiction for us: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.”

“When we make our own calculations, we need so many numbers and factors that any mistake is possible. The Lord's calculation boils down to love.”

“The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

“Because we write fiction we mine our souls. Of course you put yourself into your fiction, your fiction is you.”

“I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.”

“The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.”

“Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.”

“That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?”

“I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.”

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”