The writer who is a mother should, I think, record everything she can: make notes, keep journals, take photographs, use a tape recorder, and remind herself that there is a subject so incalculably vast significance to humanity, about which virtually nothing is known because writers have not been mothers.

The work of Jana Harris is unique in American writing. She has always had a voice of true grit—sometimes harsh, sometimes funny, always close to the bone, tart, and indomitable.

Art destroys silence.

Anyway, what is the soul but a dream of itself?

I have wished you dead and myself dead. How could it be otherwise. I have broken into you like a burglar. And you've set your dogs on me. And a pile of broken sticks. A child could kick. I have climbed you like a monument, gasoing, For the exercise and the view, And leaned over the railing at the top... Strong and warm, the summer wind.