"Summer Sisters" was actually was a huge influence on "Girls" because it was the first thing I ever consumed that sort of looked at the way that female friendship can be glorious and can be complicated and can be so like a worse betrayal than something romantic and it just showed these archetypes of femininity than totally sort of individuated them and exploded them.

You think everything can be magically cured with vitamins?” “Everything but us.

I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

With "Margaret," I remember clearly it was, you know because I did remember it clearly. I was young. I was young in terms of experience and what did I know about and I had an incredible memory from my own childhood. And so it never occurred to me to write for any other age group. And I thought I'm going to write a book and I'm going to tell the truth.

My parents gave me that gift of "reading is a good thing." I mean my mother was afraid of everything. But she was never afraid that Judy is reading.

Sometimes I can't read my own handwriting. That's a problem!