It’s just that I’m the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn’t be a pin for me.

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

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.

No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.

I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.

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