I try not to divide plot and character. I get to know a character by what they want and fear and how those internal forces play out in their lives.
The generation of women who came before us did much of our shouting. They laid the groundwork and now we can be calm and constant and steady.
Literature has done great work for feminism – writing and reading are a practice of empathy – and great literature will continue to do so.
I want to keep looking at ways to stride forward with positivity.
I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.
When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.
Some of the best work done to combat the Republicans has been wit and humor.
Women are constantly underestimated in our power, our reach, our collective pull.
The fact is there are many women who nod politely, even agree openly within their male-dominated often highly educated cultures, but vote their own minds.
I’m about to start something new. I’m waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.
Our stories are what we are. Our stories preserve us. We give them to one another. Our stories have value.
I always doubt people... I’ve survived by not believing in other human beings.
I didn’t know it until the end. All stories worth telling are love stories.
I’ve either been in love a dozen times or never. I can’t tell.
Will you be my wife forever? Here and now and beyond all of this?
Perhaps we’re all doomed to fail as mothers, but if so, it’s better to err on the side of showing too much love, not too little”.
Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness’ sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days.
We each have a story. They did this to us. There was no outside aggressor. They wanted an apocalypse. They wanted the end. And they made it happen. It was orchestrated – who got in, who didn’t. There was a master list. We weren’t on it. We were left here to die. They want to erase us, the past, but we can’t let them.
New losses dig up past losses, as if one needs the other to remember how it’s done.
His wings – she’s never seen them fully spread, massive and strong. She wants to tell him that this is how he was meant to be – as wrong as it was for her to do this to him, as wrong as it feels, he is this person in this moment, and there’s nothing more beautiful.
You think you’ll fall in love again one day?” He straightens Partridge’s bow tie. “I sure as hell hope not.