What usually happens is that when I'm nearing the end of one novel a vague idea about what I want to do next begins to present itself to me in terms of theme. And I would say over about the next six to eight months, usually as I'm out power walking in the morning, or when I'm cooking at night, or when I'm driving in the car, the people who might embody those themes take on a sharper and sharper focus. And there comes this sort of critical mass moment when they actually start to do things in my head.

what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.

the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.

I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.