If you put a pink cover on something, critics make a certain set of assumptions and may not even read the book. But my readers are happy with it.

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.

But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.

I have the best divorce of anyone I've heard of.

If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?

I have these "pinch me" moments when I realize I got to be the thing I wanted to be growing up. I'm right where I belong.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.