I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

The truth is that when you're writing a novel you're really living in it; you're living in the house, and you're living in the town.

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and one of the things I like to say is that one of the biggest impediments I had to becoming a successful writer is I had a very happy childhood.

I don't understand how people learn to live in the world if they haven't had siblings. Everything I learned about negotiation, territoriality, coexistence, dislike, inbred differences and love despite knowledge I learned from my four younger siblings.

I never think about issues when I'm working on a novel. Issues are things that happen to people in sufficient numbers to elicit widespread attention; in other words, they're just life happening. That's what I think about: life, and telling a story.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around, and nearly every book represents what my son's third grade teacher refers to as a "teachable moment.