My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

In case you haven't noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can't stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it's okay we did whatever we did.