This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it.

We are all here, on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to just find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is to find what other people need.

In The Interestings I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.

It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.

The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.

But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.

But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.