What writing ROOM taught me was that I know exactly how to be the perfect mother, but I'm not willing to do it for more than ten minutes at a time.

I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

Sometimes, I think there's a lack of ambition in me. But then sometimes, I think, no, you can, like William Blake said, you know, see heaven in a grain of sand. If you look really, really closely at a situation, you can find almost endless interest in it.

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.