Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.

She nodded, jotting something in her notebook. You’re writing that down? Has the interview started?” Lee, whenever you’re talking to a reporter, you’re being interviewed.

She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

I liked the idea of giving Eligible a feminist flavor. While I do think that in Pride and Prejudice, Liz Bennet is very bold, she is also very restricted in terms of what's appropriate for her to do and the ways it's appropriate for her to behave. One of the differences between Pride and Prejudice and Eligible is that my female characters take more initiative in their romantic lives.

... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself.