I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.

I'd love to spend a day being supermodel beautiful.

I get really starstruck and tongue tied when I'm around other writers and the conversation tends not to go well.

My lazy, unfair assumption is that everything's easier when you're young and stunning. And maybe it is! But I'd like to see for myself.

I'm not in charge of my life.

Okay, I thought. Here you are. You are here. And you move forward because that's the way it works; that's the only place u can go. You keep going until it stops hurting, or until you find new things to hurt you worse, I guess. And that is the human condition, all of us lurching along in our own private miseries, because that's the way it is. Because, I guess, God didn't give us any choice. You grow up, I remembered Abigail telling me. You learn.

People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say,'