New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.

I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.

Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.

I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth.

I think what saved me, as a writer, is that there are really two breaking points in my life. One was when I was 19 and my mother died, and one was when I was 31 and my first child was born. And that sort of gave me a kind of rebirth that I think has been invaluable to me as a novelist, in terms of seeing the world anew.