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.

I used to teach at a private school, and the parents thought I loved their children. I did not love their children! I liked them well enough, but I was always delighted to see them go off for summer vacation.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

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

Becoming a woman is an act partly of nature and partly of self-invention.

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