I make up stories about people who are either imaginary or some variation of myself.

Maybe I wouldn’t hit three fast food restaurants in a day, but I could hit one in a day. I try not to do that.

For years I’d thought my color was black: deep, dark, thoughtful, mysterious. Black, you can hide behind. But now I know it is red.

The interesting thing about overeating or being obese is there’s this physical manifestation of it.

It should be said upfront that I totally dig people who work in bookstores and libraries. They love books, and I love books, and that is all I really need to know. If they are...

I wrote a novel. It’s called ‘The Middlesteins.’ It’s fiction. It’s not a memoir. I’m not a spokesperson.

I am not one of those people who string their exes along. Instead, I run and hide: under the covers, behind my computer screen, on opposite coasts of the country.

An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.

My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.

What’s the point of having a book club if you don’t get to eat brownies and drink wine?

I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I’m still a woman.

There are generations of people who don’t know how to eat properly.

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers....

I’m a really selfish person. But I would do anything for my friends.

I check my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning. I usually take it up with me to bed so it’s on the floor next to the bed, although not actually in...

I do not mourn the death of the printed letter in a snobby, East Coast, patrician way – ‘Where have our manners gone?’ – but because I love objects, I love paper, and I love...

My love can be easily bought with a steak from Peter Luger’s.

Food and love are all intertwined at our core level. It can be a very nurturing, wonderful, loving thing.

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.

There’s something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.

No offense to Bushwick, where all my neighbors greeted me on the street and there is a growing arts community and a curious beauty to its industrial zone, but Bushwick is no Williamsburg, even if...

I’m from the Midwest. We like to know who our neighbors are.

I did get in a few fights in school. Kids threw around anti-Semitic slurs, not knowing necessarily what they meant. It was probably just something they picked up somewhere, as kids do.

Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps.

My parents are still married. They don’t weigh 350 pounds; they go to the gym all the time.

In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.

I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers.

We’ve all got flesh. I’ve just got a little more.

There are a lot of great things about food, but it’s something that’s an eternal struggle in our contemporary society, where and how food is made, where it’s coming from, how much to consume. There...

I’m not really interested in writing or reading about people who are nice and easy. I like the problem children.

I didn’t go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn’t pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn’t even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts...

For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.

My Twitter feed is probably my biggest resource of news. Other people scour the web so I do not have to, and I thank them for it.

In 1998, I started a blog, something I could control very easily and update at my own whim.

I have very distinct memories about growing up as part of what was then a very small Jewish community in Buffalo Grove, IL.

What a character eats is a detail – like eye color or a favorite song. But food is also our lifeblood.

What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don’t have my phone with me. I’ll go sit in a cafe and...

I’m pretty pro-food.

I remember being banned from other houses as a younger child during the winter holiday season; I was the only one who didn’t believe in Santa Claus, and I was ruining everyone’s Christmas.

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

No matter how many feminist tracts you read, you never forget what boys like.

In your 40s, you shed those who bring you down and surround yourself with the most positive people you know.

I have watched Occupy Wall Street mostly from the sidelines.

When does an object become a symbol? All I know is you cannot force it.

When I was growing up in Chicago, my family and I used to go to a local chain, Hackney’s, for burgers and their French fried onion loaf. I probably haven’t been to one in 25...

I’ve always been an old soul.

Most of my writer friends are women, and they’re all extremely talented, so of course I think the state of contemporary fiction for women is pretty great. Which is to say there is a ton...

I know the bestseller ‘Gone Girl’ doesn’t need an ounce of support from me, but that book was as sharp and witty as they come.

No matter how much money I made from writing, I’d keep the bookstore job.

In addition to public housing, South Williamsburg is home to shabby artists’ lofts like mine, apartments of Hasidic Jews, and one extremely tall, high-priced condo.