Long after the bomb falls and you and your good deeds are gone, cockroaches will still be here, prowling the streets like armored cars.

Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more.

I feel like I sort of missed the eighties. At the time, we didn’t know we were having fun, which is probably the way it always is.

I think powerful women don't care whether or not they're liked.

I think it's more difficult writing what it's like to be a child. You can pretend you know what it's like, but you don't really know. The only parts I can remember is that the adults were like, "Aren't they cute?" But when you're little you're looking at the other kids like they're your colleagues. They're not like, "Oh, we're all cute little kids." They're more like your office acquaintances. It's very hard to grasp the memories of what it actually was like to be a kid.

I think it's true about people now being closer to their parents, since the '60s, really. The parents are no longer from a different planet, the 1950s ideas of American family. We could be friends with our parents. After the '60s, it wasn't like a person smoking pot was what the parents would be appalled at.

I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story -- so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is.