I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

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!

I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.