When [books ban] happened, I felt completely alone and that was scary and sad.

"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 I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

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.

My mother was my greatest fan.

I don't necessarily want to talk about a book that I read. Even when I love it.

A person without curiosity may as well be dead.