If all you leave in the library is books that you think speak to everyone, what are you going to have? You'd have nothing.

Concentrate on how good if feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, just to smell the air, and feel the wind in your face

I would make up [Theodor] Seuss-like books at night when I was cleaning up from the dinner, you know, putting these little kids to bed, reading them rhyming books. And so that's what I started doing. They were really bad. I have some in a box and it says on the box, it's a note to my kids you know, when I die, if you ever publish these I will come back and haunt you.

I know where "Blubber" came from. It came from stories that my daughter told me when she came home from fifth grade. There was a kid in the class who was being bullied. We didn't even call it bullying then, that's what's so weird. Victimization in the classroom. The word bully was so out, was so not in use for all those years and now it's back big time.

some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

"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.

When you ask, did writing change my life? It totally changed my life. It gave me my life.