I sometimes feel like a British writer more so than I feel like an American writer. But I think that has to do with my subjective understanding of what it means to be either of those things.

I liked the idea of being from 'somewhere else.' I do think that's inherited. My father never had a fixed sense of where home was, and for my sister and me, it is much easier not to belong than to belong.

I actually did work and produced two short dissertations, one on Faulkner and one on the film criticism of the stream-of-consciousness novelist Dorothy Richardson.

In making up stories, as in reading stories, I could create a contained world in which an experience is shared in its entirety.

The feeling I had several times in youth, when lying in a field staring up at the night sky, that I might fall into the infinite void - for people like me, this idea mostly provokes anxiety.

In the world I've lived in, gay marriage, for example, seems completely logical. And yet there are many people who don't live in that world.

For those of us whose thoughts digress; for whom unexpected juxtapositions are exhilarating rather than tiresome; who aim, if always inadequately, to convey life's experience in some semblance of its complexity - for such writers, the semi-colon is invaluable.

For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?

At university, my generation were ready to fight, but we didn't really have anything to fight for.

I'm a big believer in the complex realities of young people's lives.

We think that we know people from this constellation of points: 'I know that story. I know that girl. I've heard that story a thousand times.' But actually, you never know that story.

If it's unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, it's totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry.

Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don't even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential, and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen, I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine.

Henry James and Edith Wharton are huge for me because they gave me a way to understand America while still respecting the European backgrounds of my relatives.

The Strauss allowed me to be a writer. Without it, 'The Emperor's Children' would not exist. When I received the award, I was teaching, had one baby, and was pregnant with another. There was no time for writing.

I have always been interested in that relationship between what happens in our head and what happens in the world.

If you live in a family or have five roommates, there's some sort of reality check, but when you live alone, there's a lot more leeway for your fantasy life to be more and more a part of your everyday life.

As a reader, I have always enjoyed 'ranty' books, but they are all written by men.

Years ago, I worked in a newspaper office, and there were men that would have fits of temper, and it was just accepted that that's who they were, and everyone would laugh about it, but if a woman got upset or angry, something wasn't right: she was 'hysterical' or 'a little unhinged.' It didn't have the same sort of connotation at all.

I was someone who believed that every day should be different from the last.

Rushing around can be a pointless diversion from actually living your life.

Place and displacement have always been central for me. A type of insecurity goes with that: you are always following the cues, like learning the dance steps when the dance is already under way.

Because we moved so much, I was always having to adapt and work out the lay of the land. So I felt envious of those who did not have to try.

You can't make a character do something they wouldn't do.