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" 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. "

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" I think listening to music from your youth is as powerful as a scent passed beneath your nose. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 want to write the kind of book that we want to read. If you put in the things that you are thinking about and create characters who feel like they could live - at least for me, that's the way I want to write. "

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

" 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. "

" My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things. "

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

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

" I am a novelist through and through. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" As a novelist, I feel lucky that I can traffic in nuance. I'm more interested in looking at how things change over time, at how people try and sometimes fail to make meaning out of their lives. "

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

" '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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" I don't write autobiographically. "

" 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. "