My father was a writer; I've known a lot of children of writers - daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.

Girls are really looking to places that have limits and boundaries: where adults are the adults and there are rules, and where they feel safe.

Pubescent girls, it seems, are manifestly more likely to exhibit extreme and bizarre psychological symptoms than are teenage boys.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California.

Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.