Baby," groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.

When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there... whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time.

As the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and fall slid into winter, I realized one of the great truths about tragedy: You can dream of disappearing. You can wish for oblivion, for endless sleep or the escape of fiction, of walking into a river with your pockets full of stones, of letting the dark water close over your head. But if you've got kids, the web of the world holds you close and wraps you tight and keeps you from falling no matter how badly you think you want to fall.

People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say,'

Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating.

I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fat. Every flab roll and cellulite crinkle would serve as testimony to the excellence of my baked goods

Writing let me escape... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from.