That her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out

At some point I was a HappyAfricanFeminist who does not hate men. And who likes lip gloss and who wears high heels for herself but not for men.

Honesty. And I just really think there's a fundamental friendship that needs to exist, whether it's a lover, whether it's a sister...there's just this connection both people need to be effortlessly themselves.

Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.

I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'