This is a bad story.” “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.” “No, you should,” I say. “But—” “I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.

Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.

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.

What's crucial about being an executive producer is that you stay in the loop, information-wise. They have to share all their major decisions with you.

There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.

I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.

I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.