I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.

I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.