People might seem to have a perfectly fine life but inside, we don't even know if they've suffered.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

The process of open adoption is not discussed in the way it should be. Everyone I know who has adopted domestically has at least one tragic story. It was important to me to be able to describe those situations.

I want to say that, in general, when it works, open adoption is great.

I find I have to touch what I am working on every day, or a deep-seated dread kicks in that is very hard to overcome.

I will say in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.

Idea of the generations continuing is really important. And that's interesting to me. I write about families; I'm interested in families. Even though I think a family can be just two people or two people and a dog, I really wanted children for that reason.