Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.

I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

The idea was to focus on the primal drama of parenthood: the way from moment to moment you swing from comforter to tormentor, just as kids simultaneously light up our lives and drive us nuts. I was trying to capture that strange, bipolar quality of parenthood. For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have.

Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.

When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything