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

And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

Even more than getting compliments on social media, what I love is when some random stranger says something very funny or insightful about my books, often in 140 characters or less! It's a very casual, low-stakes, non-burdensome way of connecting that I think is fun for both the writer and the reader. And there are a lot of clever people out there who have no connection to publishing.

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.

It is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.

..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.