Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

I often envy my friends who are visual artists. Visual artists have other things to work with. Other media. I envy my sculptor friends: they have hunks of matter. Marble. Wood. It's physical, which I find very appealing. What we have is nothing, is just glaringly blank.

I was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

Success is so fleeting, even if you get a good book deal or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: What about the next one?

Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!