She lacked the sheen of money, muscular good health, good skin, good clothes.

My dog is vicious to the uninvited guest, lavishly affectionate to the invited one, and so freakishly acute that he has mastered the English language.

The implication of AKC registration is that a dog who has it is better than a dog who hasn't.

I started thinking about what I've always been interested in: how people can't see things that are right in front of them. All you have to do is read the papers to see endless examples of smart people who can't see the nose on their faces.

Pacing is not the sort of thing you can plan out beforehand, but you're always aware of it as you write, because you need to make constant decisions.

To me, respect for human life begins with making it more difficult to obtain an inanimate object that is designed to snuff it out.

This is how you know you're on Long Island, somebody offers you coffee and Entenmann's.

Like many people, I have a fascination with lies and the people who tell them. I wouldn't say I've never told a lie, but I don't think I've ever told one without both assuming I would be found out and feeling absolutely rotten about it.

Serious writers pretend they don't care about film adaptations of their work, but it's a colossal lie: We all care.

Personally, I would love to see every gun on the planet disappear.

Naturally, no march on Washington would be complete without its counter-demonstration.

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.

A successful birth is not a birth without drugs or monitors or surgery. A successful birth is when you're alive and the baby's alive.

Every so often in life, you encounter a brilliant idea. Usually, at least in my case, it's somebody else's idea.

Did I become a theater person right then, sitting in the Imperial Theater, waiting for the high piccolo note at the start of 'Pippin'? Maybe.

I was 11 years old and horse-obsessed. New York City was an unfortunate place for a girl like me to be growing up.

People need a narrative, and if there isn't one on offer, they make one up.

As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who appear formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is watching them rise again, and seeing how they've changed and grown, if indeed they have.

I made it to London aged six, an event I recorded in my diary with coloured markers to convey my sense of occasion. And in 1983, after graduating from college, I returned to spend two years at Cambridge University.