I laugh when I'm writing. I feel like all my work is funny to me.

Don't you think almost anything can be funny? Almost anything.

My natural tendency is to fall in love with language and character and setting, and kind of forget about pacing. Narrative tension doesn't come naturally to me, and if it does feel fast-paced that makes me incredibly happy.

In general, I think every novel is a political novel, in that every novel is an argument about how the world works, who has power, who has a voice, what we should care about. But political novels can be boringly polemical if they end up being too black and white, too one dimensional, like war is bad, killing people is wrong.

You can hurt people's feelings if you laugh.

When the kids were growing up, I think they thought the worst thing about me being a mom is that I would laugh at them. They would say something that they thought was serious and intense and I would laugh. I thought it was funny, but they don't want to be laughed at.

Nice girls are not supposed to be hungry. They are not supposed to feed themselves or care about their own food. They're definitely not supposed to take food out of a child's mouth.