You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

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.

I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women.

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.

She really does like him, she likes lying next to him, she wants to be around him; when you get down to it, can you say that about many people?

... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.

Ordinarily, of course, I thought it best to remain inconspicuous, but the gesture had a certain irresistable theatricaility, and an inevitablility. Sometimes you can feel the pull of what other people want from you, and you sacrifice yourself, you risk seeming odd or sunsavory, to keep them entertained.