When I was writing The Woman Warrior, I felt that I was writing something completely different; that nothing like it had ever been written. So I thought if I couldn’t get it published, I would just keep copies and it would really be okay if it was published after I die or if somebody discovered it 100 years from now, 1,000 years from now. I’m always thinking about people reading it someday — and that will be alright.

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

Ideas come and go, stories stay.

I think stories are forever…[But] the way we get stories has changed. This might be an ostrich-in-the-sand kind of thing, but I still see my job as producing the best story I possibly can.

Everybody wonders why I continue working at this stage. I keep working because there's always new stories. … And as long as people want me to tell them, I'll be there doing them.

One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote.

When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.

The transition probably happened when I was working on my doctoral dissertation. Around that time, I started sending out short stories. Short stories were more manageable because, in some ways, submitting them was similar to submitting academic research articles. So I think it was easy for me to do. But I remember going online, because I didn't know much about publishing or people in publishing - I only knew one person who was a writer before I published my book. I went on Google and searched, ‘how do you publish a book?’ and the steps just seemed so overwhelming.

I set my hand to the art of writing early on. Publishing was easy for me, and I at once found favor and understanding. But it was a long time before I realized and convinced myself that this was anything but mere chance. Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb. Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.

In some of the earlier work, I liked to keep readers guessing: one story asked a question, and another resolved it. For the stories I’m working on now—both the new ones and the older ones I’m revisiting—I want to wring everything out. That way, I don’t have to write separate stories for every character who surprises me.

File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit, give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it’s yours!—that’s the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don’t buy them; they buy “mixture as before.” Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened.