I don't mind being called a "feminist," as I certainly embrace the tenets of feminism, though it does feel a little sad to me that we need to call a novel "feminist" simply because the female characters are interesting and strong.

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.

As soon as you start to question your own intent while you're still in the process of discovering your story, you're in trouble because you've pulled out of that unconscious space that is so necessary in the beginning of the drafting process.

When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out.

Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.

My mom was a big Elvis fan and a general pop culture buff, and so I grew up in a house filled with what were then called "movie magazines,"Before Elvis when Rhona Barrett wrote her column about the stars. And so it seeped in.