Everything they say a girl should get from her father in terms of total acceptance and love, I got all that from my father. But then I married a man just like my mother - so phlegmatic.

I think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became.

I still have such a thing for leather jackets. I have a closet full of them, and my husband is always saying to me, 'Why do you need another jacket? You have plenty of jackets.'

Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.

Telling kids the truth isn't always entirely possible, but talking to them is.

In 1970, somebody once asked me whether I thought my books would still be around in 40 years, and I thought, 'How would I know, and why would I care?' Well, it turns out I really do care.

In sixth grade, I made up books to give book reports on.

Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?

I am such a rewriter; I have so many notebooks filled with drafts you wouldn't believe.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.