Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.

Every mother I've ever met, pretty much without exception, is doing the best job she can ever do.

He loved me. He loved me, but he doesn't love me anymore, and it's not the end of the world.

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

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?

There's all kinds of love in the world, and not all of it looks like the stuff in greeting cards.