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.

I get really starstruck and tongue tied when I'm around other writers and the conversation tends not to go well.

Right now women are using surrogates because they can't be pregnant. What worries me is the possibility that soon they'll use surrogates because they don't want to be pregnant.

I'm so glad that social media gives me a chance to do that, to celebrate books I love and help proselytize for books I love.

I think it has as much to do with honoring my own voice as it does with feeling a responsibility to my readers or my daughters.

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

She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name.