They wouldn’t have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain. And I had no explanation, no answers. When you’re on a battleground, you don’t have the luxury of time to dwell on the various historical factors and sociopolitical influences that caused the war. You just keep your head down and try to survive it, to shove the pages back in the book, close the covers and pretend that nothing’s broken, nothing’s wrong.

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 decided.. that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean on.

You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.

I struggle with the fact that men's popular fiction is talked about differently. Books like mine don't get as many reviews and probably won't win any prizes, but they entertain the pants off of hundreds of thousands of women.

There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.

People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.