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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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