I love it when people ask who my influences are... or what my favorite part of my last book was... or the last great book I read.

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?

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

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer.

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.

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

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