I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write, and there are very few of them.

I've always had a certain facility with words.

In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.

Over the last twenty years, we've changed the world just enough to make it radically different, but not enough to make it work.

I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.

Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.