If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write.

If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.

I will write my way into another life.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

I am a totally public person.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

This is my job, my livelihood: the health and the well-being of the publishing industry. We're all responsible for this.