Writing can't be taught.

I think memories are like dreams. Not reliable proof of anything. I can’t prove a memory any more than I can prove a dream.

The belief that love is a finite essence that will eventually run out holds a certain logic for me even now, even if I am supposed to know better.

New York is like a big dinner party. You have to be very careful about what you say and do because you never know whose feet are touching under the table.

While I was writing 'The Big Girls,' I had to take a big breath each morning and calm myself sufficiently to once again enter that world. But friends tell me that it is the only thing that really interests me. They say that I like to be upset.

When I was 23, I went to work for Jack Nicholson reading scripts. Later, I was married to a production designer named Richard Sylbert. So I lived in Los Angeles for ten years.

Transgressive to me means breaking the rules and sinning. I don't see myself as breaking the rules and sinning. I'm really interested in what it means to be female.

On its 2015 list, the Fish and Wildlife Service included the 'ea, or hawksbill turtle, as well as the green turtle, Ridley sea turtle, leatherback turtle and loggerhead turtle. Four mammals are considered endangered: the Hawaiian hoary bat; the kohola, or humpback whale; the sperm whale; and the endemic Hawaiian monk seal.

It is possible to say that all of my books concern themselves with the notion of what it means to be female - whether it is in New York City in 2000 or Calcutta in 1836. In that way, my books really are the same.

'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.