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

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" I am a novelist through and through. "

" These are old issues. Female power, misogyny, the treatment of women, how you make meaning in the world. And these are all issues that I've been thinking about and writing about for a very long time. "

" Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us. "

" When you have a book out, it's like a period of protracted or concentrated megalomania, and it's really not normal or good for you or any of that. "

" I'm not particularly good at doodling. I'll doodle the same face over and over again. "

" I don't write autobiographically. "

" When I was in junior high school, friends and I were in a consciousness-raising group, a term that now seems quaint like a butter churn, but it was very powerful. It was a really wonderful experience. "

" Some people are uncomfortable saying what they feel. "

" If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book. "

" Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it. "

" I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing. "

" It's gratifying to be taken seriously, always. "

" I think a lot of the dull parts of first drafts come from a kind of over-managing, intrusive writer who wants to direct traffic. The idea of taking out the parts that the reader could infer is very liberating, and it's weirdly part of radicalizing your work: it allows you to go to new places fast. "

" When you're writing, it's so absorbing. It's like a drop cloth goes over you, and the world outside falls away, but you do have a miniature version of the world, your own world, that you actually have some control over. I love to work. "

" We all would love the idea of people getting what's coming to them in books and in life, but sometimes the trajectory is a little more complicated than that. "

" I've always been drawn to writing for young readers. The books that I read growing up remain in my mind very strongly. "

" Novels can be a snapshot of a moment in time, or several moments in time, and as a reader, that's what I really like, and as a writer, it's what I'm drawn to also. "

" I'm really interested in women of different generations... I think there is no one female experience. "

" I sometimes feel as if ideas for a novel kind of pop up like numbers in a bingo tumbler, and then they're ready to go. "

" I believe that sometimes, when we talk about books, we're talking about the big picture - how they're relevant. "

" I think everyone is always measuring themselves against other people to a certain degree; it happens automatically, and it's hard not to be this way at least some of the time. "

" 'Pleasure' is a word I think about a lot, as opposed to 'entertainment.' They are very, very different. "

" I think my writing changed when I put 'the' in front of my titles. It had more command. "

" I love guacamole and think about it a lot when I'm supposed to be thinking about language. "

" It's hard for me to feel bad when I'm writing well. "

" When I wrote 'The Interestings,' I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this. "

" People say, write what you know, but it's really, write about what obsesses you. Write about what you're thinking about all the time. "

" I really love Scrabble. I played it with my mother growing up. We took it everywhere with us. We didn't know then about the two letter words. Who knew that AA, or more controversially, ZA, or QI were words? We were a games family generally. "

" 'Charlotte's Web,' which I read sitting on my mother's lap, was the most emotional experience: that was when I made the leap from seeing how to untangle words to realizing how books both contain and convey strong feelings. "

" I really like to entertain myself in various ways when I'm writing. "