I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.

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

My mother was a cracker jack typist. And she would come in and sit at my house and type the final type script before I would then send it to the publisher. And it was nice for us.

That's good when you don't know what you're doing. But you're doing it and it's spontaneous and you're not afraid.

I always had stories inside my head and one day I just decided to start writing them down. I didn't actually decide.

I didn't know I was really a writer until I read it in the New York Times. And then I thought, "Oh my god, maybe I can really do this". That was a review of "Margaret."

I was sick all the time, one exotic illness after another, which lasted throughout my twenties. My worst decade. But from the day the first book was accepted, I never got sick again. Writing changed my life.