After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.

I feel like if you read something, and it makes you so curious about a topic that you then go read something else, that's exciting.

There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.

Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.

I think there is still pressure to marry. I think there is still pressure to have children. If you're middle or upper class, those pressures exist at a later age now.

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.