I hate to cook and love to eat.

I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.

The way we started was, Alison [McGhee] said, 'Tall girl, short girl.' We had no plans beyond that.

I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

The Tiger Rising is, again, about a motherless child. His name is Rob Horton. He is dealing with the death of his mother, when he and his father move to a new town. And two things happen the same day that Rob gets sent home. One is he meets a girl named Sistine Bailey, who is what my mother would call "a piece of work," and he finds a real tiger in a cage in the woods behind the motel where he lives with his dad. And that's the story: what happens with the Sistine tiger, the real tiger and Rob's grief.

I'm in trouble if they can't, because everyone's taller than me, and if that's true, that means I can't have any friends! Alison [McGhee] and I look very much like, I was going to say Bink and Gollie, but I meant Mutt and Jeff. We look ridiculous when we walk down the street together, because she's so tall and I'm so short. But yes, tall people and short people can, and should be, friends. I, personally, like being short. I think it makes things easier.