Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

It can be demonstrated from history that no society has ever survived after its family life deteriorated.

Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.

Girls are really looking to places that have limits and boundaries: where adults are the adults and there are rules, and where they feel safe.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.

Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

This week I've been reading a lot and doing little work. That's the way things ought to be. That's surely the road to success.

When darkness threatens your world, friends can be beams of sunshine if only you'll let them.

Fear is a state of mind. There is nothing real about it. Welcome it in, 60 seconds passes, and as your guest politely ask it to leave. It will leave every single time!!

I don't wish to not be a woman, but I'd certainly like to be a woman whose sense of purpose comes from within.

Only the inquiring mind solves problems.

There were no jewelry hidden. Walt wanted this atmosphere: They were supposed to live here, they've been outside somewhere, but they could come back at any minute and catch us.

As an observer of markets - whenever everyone focuses on one thing - like Greece and Europe - maybe they miss issues that are far more important - such as a meaningful slowdown in India and China.

Each one of us has both; good and evil virtues. Those who decide to focus on the good ones succeed in life.

It is strange how your understanding of a play changes. It normally happens after a performance and you suddenly think, 'So that's what that line really means' - it's like a light going on.

I believe in love - yes, I'm one of those girls.