Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where all is correct. But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion." Nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will be more perilous.

Whatever this feeling is - this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to.

Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall,' which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together.

Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide.

There's a lot of disorder that comes along with wanting to know everything and wanting to try everything and wanting to experience everything, but there's a lot of knowledge that comes out of it too.

At the end of the day I am a writer, and if I don't take care of this, no one else will.

How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it?