The belief that one's suffering has a greater cosmic purpose, and is thus more exciting and more noble, well, it made a lot of sense to me.

Maybe the body is taking responsibility where the mind is not. It's scrapbooking for us.

I want the plot to be as complicated as possible. Usually I'll write all the way through to an end, and then I go back and try to fix the ending so that it makes sense. I don't think out the plot ahead of time.

When my husband first read a draft, he said, "You spend too much time describing the characters' outfits." He was right. I removed much of the clothes talk, but quite a bit remained.

I think the one reason that writers marry other writers - one of the reasons that I married another writer - was, I fell in love with that writer. But second of all, I had been married before and a source of marital strife was me needing to go away for a couple of weeks to write or it's Saturday and I think I just need to work today and not hang out with you.

When you are expending much energy on someone else's demise, it's like you weaken your psychic immune system.

I can't even tell you what else I imagined. I can only humiliate myself to such a degree; at a certain point it becomes humorous, and this story is not meant to be humorous. This story is meant to winch your ribs open and tamper with your heart. This story is meant to make you realize that your chances of happiness in this world are terribly slim if you lack a fine imagination.