You really can't write well if you're thinking about what the reviewers might say.

I'm very interested in compassion - compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.

If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

I am very interested in loyalty, even if the person to whom one is loyal is flawed, criminal, or otherwise in the wrong.

It annoys the hell out of me when people say, This is the kitchen, and this is the bathroom. What am I, Helen Keller? I mean, it's pretty obvious when you're in a kitchen and when you're not.