And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.

There are a lot of things in the world that are a lot weirder than psychic abilities, that we accept as true.

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

The better you learn to take care of yourself, the less you settle for being around people who can't or won't treat you as well as you're accustomed.

... 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.

My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.

I think it's significantly easier to be a female writer today than in the early 1800's. That said, it's hard to imagine almost anyone who knows anything about publishing disagreeing with the statement that women writers today are often taken much less seriously than men writers. But it's hard to quantify, and even define, what being taken seriously means.