If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.

Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.

The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families.

The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.

Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful.

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.