“...what makes me feel as though I belong here out in this world is not the teacher, not the mother, not the lover, but what goes on in my mind when I am writing. Then I belong here and then all of the things that are disparate and irreconcilable can be useful. I can do the traditional things that writers always say they do, which is to make order out of chaos. Even if you are reproducing disorder, you are sovereign at this point. Struggling through the work is extremely important—more important to me than publishing it."
(If you didn't do this...?)
"Then I would be part of the chaos."
--from “Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction,” (Interview with Toni Morrison, 1993) in The Paris Review Interviews, II, p. 366.
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