I try not to have anything too much going on between waking up and getting to work. I like to just be really fresh when I sit down. I always have my best ideas, like, within five minutes of starting. And then the rest of the day is just kind of putting in time.

If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust.

The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings.

I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn't bear that it wasn't real. She wanted to live in it.

My father once nearly came to blows with a female dinner guest about whether a particular patch of embroidery was fuchsia or magenta. But the infinite gradations of color in a fine sunset - from salmon to canary to midnight blue - left him wordless.

Partly I resented being perceived as weak because I was a girl.

I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.