Head's all empty, I don't care,' he'd sing to me, quoting the Grateful Dead, and I'd force a smile, thinking that my head was never empty and that if it ever was, you could be darn sure I'd care.

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.

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed.

I was lucky to receive help at the beginning of my career and now I want to help other writers as much as I can.

I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

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.