The idea of equality is misunderstood. I wouldn't ever argue that everyone is the same, but that differences should not be hierarchical. Attitudes and expectations have been imposed on both men and women. For instance, men had very little to do with the raising of their children before the women's movement. The women's movement has freed men to become more active as fathers. We're living in a period of transition, but change can be much slower than we want, with unintended consequences, and can also be happening without our seeing it.

Desire is a word I'm tired of. I've been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we're all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It's the subject. It's our subject. It's the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will.

As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

I'm not just interested in the thoughts I have, but also in others' thoughts, and why not carry those forward? That's why American fiction can be so thin. All these fears, like not seeming to be original - I mean, hell, most stuff isn't. The question is whether you can articulate your thoughts for the moment in which you're living, which is a different time. Say them in a newer way. There are new events, and language changes - sensibilities change. We are writing in and of the time we're in. Oh, it's a weird time.

I learned to write from reading. I had no writing classes. It's part of my thinking as the writer-author, reading, but then I also want to bring this into my characters, who also read and think. There's that great quote from Virginia Woolf - it's very simple: "...books continue each other." I think when you're a writer, you're also, hopefully, a reader, and you're bringing those earlier works into your work.

I think I'm too indoctrinated. I'm going to use everything I can, and I think if I used an advertisement in that one, it would be yet another way to connect the current day with Wharton. Wharton has been perceived sometimes as being too upper class; Wharton was an extraordinary social thinker. As relevant today as anyone, so she uses some language that isn't current, but to me, I'm so happy about that because I get so bored with the 100 words that people mostly use.