My publisher feels that my readers are loyal to the voice of my stories, the characters I'm creating.

The condom broke. I know how stupid that sounds. It's the reproductive version of the dog ate my homework.

If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.

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

I hope that's what I've taught my girls - to be fair, to recognize their own position and their own good fortune, to use their voices to make things better. Beyond that, I'd tell them just to be kind.

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

And then he left, and came back, and our lives fell apart, like a well-loved book that you’d read and read again, until one night you picked it up to read yourself to sleep and the binding collapsed, sending dozens of pages spiraling toward the floor.