TO WRITE IS TO BE INSANE
Molly Gloss

In ordinary life you look sane, act sane—just as sane as any mother of five children. But once you start to write, you are moonstruck, out of your senses. As you stare hard inward, following behind your eyes the images of invisible places, of people, of events, and listening hard inward to silent voices and unspoken conversations—as you are seeing the story, hearing it, feeling it—your very skin becomes permeable, not a boundary, and you enter the place of your writing and live inside the people who live there. You think and say incredible things. You even love other people—you don’t love your children and your husband at all. And here is the interesting thing to me: when this happens, you often learn something, understand something, that can transcend the words on the paper.