I'm very interested, in all my books, in community, what binds people together, which I think is an obvious consequence of being the fourth of six children.

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like.

If you're going to spend two or three years immersed in a subject, you better be deeply interested in it, or it won't be interesting to the reader.

I believe that children are, by nature, very forgiving. I don't think children expect their parents to be perfect. I think they demand that their parents be real.

I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I'm reviewing a book or doing research.

I think I've always been interested in playing people who are judged very harshly.