If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.

As a writer, you want to go somewhere else sometimes. You want to vary the terrain that you're exploring.

I think there’s a lot of threshold weeping. Like, am I doing this? Am I really wearing this out in the world? My daughter is very much like that. She will put clothes on and her clothes just make her beside herself. They make her so sad sometimes. And you do realize you feel betrayed sometimes by your own clothing. You put something on that usually protects you and makes you OK, and sometimes you’re just not fit for the world and even your best pants can’t overcome that feeling for you.

My husband is always accusing me of being a context-free individual. He asks something and he has no idea where it came from or what it related to. I have to supply him with way more supplementary information than I ever have to supply my female friends.

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.

We're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.

If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.