Barbara Kingsolver is Dr. Frankenstein

according to her (but then, aren't all authors?).  That's a direct quote.  As is:

"My country does not encourage me to view it as a work in progress, but as a perfect, finished product, and if you criticize it, you are called 'unAmerican.' "

"When I'm reading a novel – and I try, I do, I give it a chance, at least fifty pages – I ask myself: Do I care what happens to these people? And if not, why keep reading?  Because they're not real!"

"The greatest virtue of fiction, in my opinion, is that it creates empathy for the theoretical stranger...By reading novels, we're participating in a profoundly political act."

She also referred to writing as a "barely controlled lunacy."  I like that. 

In other notes, I wish I didn't like my job so that I could call in sick for the rest of the week and finish reading this Doris Lessing quintet.  I wouldn't even come up for air.