You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back and forth from school. The hour my children are seated at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them, the crumbs of their after-school snack littering the table, is without a doubt the worst hour of my day.

My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper.

I mean, I do actually think there is a qualitative difference between aborting in the early part of the first trimester and in, you know, the middle or later part of the second trimester, in a way that you feel about it in that you grow attached.

For a couple of months there I was shrieking like a banshee.

I smoked pot when I was a teenager because other kids were doing it, but I didn't enjoy it that much.