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

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

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

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.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

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.

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