Many writers secretly long to be performers. You always get the 'if you weren't a writer' question. I would be a back-up singer, to stand in the back and go like 'do, do, do.'

People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say.'

I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'

If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the ‘Times’ might notice you.

Bethie and Harold glowed, with success and contentedness, and with, Jo thought, a little meanly, the kind of well-rested good looks you could have only when you were childless.

If you write chick lit, and if you’re a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You’ll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.

I wanted love, the big love, the kind people wrote songs and made movies about. I wanted to be the center of some guy’s universe, the only thing he could think about. I wanted to matter that way.

Sometimes at night when we were watching TV, he would speak to his belly as if it were a pet, giving it a little pat and asking, “A little popcorn? Another beer?

I don’t particularly like being angry about stuff. I’d rather hang out with my daughter and write my little books.

Girls today, Judy Pressman had told her. They act like they’re the first ones to have done any of this. They’ve got to reinvent the wheel, and make everything ten times harder than it has to be.