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 opened her mouth but did not immediately speak, and I felt, simultaneously, the impulse to coax the words from her and the impulse to suppress them. I always thought I wanted to know a secret, or I wanted an event to unfold – I wanted my life to start – but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.

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

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

I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person - not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way - I don't think that's exploitive.

To be a person who sees a political ad on television and takes the statements in it as fact, how can you exist in this world? How is it you're not robbed daily by charlatans who knock at your door?