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" No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never occurred to me that I might make my living that way. "

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" You need a place to work that works for you, and you need people to understand that when you are writing, you are doing a rarefied type of brain surgery and therefore should not be subject to a million random interruptions. "

" I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another. "

" When you have that deep kind of hunger that is part longing, what's better to eat than the best apple pie? Or the best potato salad and guacamole? Or the best deviled eggs and crab cakes and white chocolate raspberry pie? "

" Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times. "

" When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads. "

" I don't have a medicine cabinet. "

" In this wide world, I don't think that there's just one person for any of us. I think we look until we find one that feels right, and oftentimes, it works out just fine. "

" If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost. "

" Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love. "

" I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story. "

" We're such imperfect beings. I think that's more often the case than not. "

" I think writers are born, not made. "

" I've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else. "

" The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books. "

" If I could visit dead authors, I'd head right over to E. B. White, though I'm so in awe of him I'd probably just sit at his feet and weep. He's the master of clarity, of understated humor, of palatable political conviction. "

" Every book is its own experience, the writing of it. "

" No matter what you write, you need an active imagination. "

" I think Chicago is the best city in the country, hands down, but I don't like the winter there anymore. "

" I'm the kind of person who is entertained watching someone simply be themselves, whether they're putting their children to bed or making dinner or sitting at the table reading the morning newspaper. "

" I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way. "

" As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom. "

" Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off. "

" My characters are like my children in a way. I create them, and then I worry about them forevermore. "

" Not being as self-contained as men, we need to share things: It's almost as though you only know what you feel about things after you share them with a woman. "

" I got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children. "

" I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person. "

" My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate. "

" Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that. "

" You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map. "

" When I wrote 'Home Safe,' I wanted to look at a number of things: the mystery and joy and pain of creativity. What happens when a vital safety net is suddenly removed. The difficulty some people have in growing up. The way a deep love can be as crippling as it is satisfying. But mostly, I wanted to look at the mother-daughter relationship. "