I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing

For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?