Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.

To really love Joan Didion—to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase—you have to be female.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

Every great culture has cared a lot, one way or another, about the fate of its girls.

Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.