Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.

People didn't like me; I was loud and aggressive. People can take it from a 42-year-old, but when you're a little kid, and people are like, 'You're loud and awful,' you think, 'I guess I am awful,' so writing and figuring out how to put things into words was the way I felt better.

I decided early that I would be a writer when I grew up. That, I thought, was the profession that went with the kind of woman I wanted to become: one who is free to do whatever she chooses.

There's two identity markers I'm sure of, and one is, I'm Jewish. And the other is, I'm a writer. There's just no arguing with either thing. I'm just Jewish.

I never understood what the big deal is about privacy.

It's a profound thing to watch another human being come out of your body.

I feel like I turn into my grandma when I'm pecking away at Twitter. And I don't care.

I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen with which to record my experiences.

I think it would be difficult to argue that I'm a net-negative for womankind. I've tried pretty hard to bring in unusual female voices and perspectives. Not just young women and not just white women, either. I don't know that I'm the best target for improvement. I don't know that I'm the problem.

For 10 minutes, I was somebody's mother, and that was both the most traumatic and also the most transcendent experience of my life.