My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.