I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining, but are also, I hope, well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today.

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

There are a lot of women like me in the world, and we rarely get to see ourselves.

...thinking that the world was like an orange, that I could split it open with my thumbnail and find a whole different world, the grown-up world, the secrets beneath the skin.

I don't think any writer chooses what his or her work is called.

It's like if a young woman writes it, then it's chick lit. We don't care if she's slaying vampires or working as a nanny or living in Philadelphia. It's chick lit, so who cares? You know what we call what men write? Books.

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