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

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.

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

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.

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.

Love is a combination of friendship, passion, and respect.

Like I said, hearts can be tricky things. Sometimes gender doesn't matter when two souls connect.

Spring time is a time for new adventure.

These days, I spend more time thanking God for His daily blessings than I do asking Him for more. The spirit of gratitude is quite a great feeling.

They had a saying: An Arab loves in the order of: his son, his camel, and his wife - but there were times when one was allowed to take precedence over the other!

Disney world is an armpit compared to Montana.

The truth is what hurts

Jeff knew full well what he was walking away from. Again, he needed to deal with this right away.

Art is an experience, not an object.

I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.