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.

I just have this sort of entrepreneurial spirit and I work really hard at promoting myself.

It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. It was very freeing. I keep using that word "freeing" or "liberating." I feel like Houdini sometimes, like I'm just getting out of one set of shackles after another, hanging upside down inside a burlap bag with handcuffs on. Hopefully one day, I'm going to get out of this tank of water.

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.

You can't live and write at the same time.

I do sometimes miss doing that lighter, more humorous work, and I find there's a heavier responsibility that goes along with a literary reputation. You have to start knowing what you're talking about and you have to go have public conversations with writers. That's been pretty intense; I have to really stay on top of things in a way I didn't before.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!