I love it when people ask if Jennifer Weiner is a pen name. Um, if I wanted a pen name I could have done a LOT better than this!

If there had been an exercise I'd liked, would I have gotten this big in the first place?

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.

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 wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.

There are two kinds of houses in the neighborhood where I grew up-the ones where the parents stayed married, and the ones where they didn’t.

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.