Tom, my husband, who converted to Judaism when we got married, and as a consequence, we were learning about historical conversions to Judaism. Really, every time it pops up, it's very strange.

I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances.

A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.

It's very difficult, I think for most writers, to carve out the time and the kind of imaginative space to do the writing that you really want to do and also to be an active, engaged, compassionate, giving human being in the world, to the people around you and to your broader community.

A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.

[Michael] Chabon is arguing in favor of what is at the same time an old-fashioned and very forward-thinking opening up - of taking off the class associations with those labels, because we grew up, or I certainly grew up, feeling that, "Oh, there's literary fiction, and beneath that, there's these other things." He's actually saying that they're all of equal merit, and in many cases, that work in the genres, or work that draws from the genres is more entertaining for readers, since it is our job to entertain people.

I think about the collaboration between writers and readers, but I also think about the collaboration between all the writers in a generation or in a country or across time contributing to this massive project of documenting and reimagining our world.