Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.

I don't particularly like being angry about stuff. I'd rather hang out with my daughter and write my little books.

If there had been an exercise I'd liked, would I have gotten this big in the first place?

Writing let me escape... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from.

I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed.

I love it when people ask who my influences are... or what my favorite part of my last book was... or the last great book I read.