If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.

I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.

I think that people all grow up and have their same personalities, but you can say, "Oh, I can see the roots of this personality, which I didn't like, but then you grew up, and I can still see you as that person, but I do really like you now." Which is sort of how I feel about children - I mean, about children who I knew when I was a child and grew up with, and they're still my friends, and children that I know as children who I see growing up, and every year I like them more.