'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.

Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.

People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.

It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.

The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.