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 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 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

My sense is that beautiful women are living in a different world than I am, and that it's a world with benefits but also drawbacks - like, you're on a ticking clock, because the day you stop being supermodel-beautiful is the day that everything the world has to offer you is no longer being offered.

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.

This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body.

My book sales make 'real writers' possible.