Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one.

Listen: I’m OK cute. I’m no stunner.

As creative people, we should be really conscious of being of service in our work, being as generous as we can.

Social media can connect you with other people in so many wonderful ways – but it can also make you really sick of yourself.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

I was fat because my parents were a little fat themselves at that point in their lives, and I ate what they ate.

Do you often find yourself uttering the phrase, ‘I feel like I should go?’ You do not need to go. You are busy that night. You are busy every night, forever.

I don’t know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.

Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.

The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.

In the past, I was sometimes put in this women’s lit category, and I was never really sure that was the appropriate place for me – although I certainly recognize it can be helpful and...

I won’t go anywhere near the new Times Square. It’s seizure-inducing.

I always tell people this when they’re looking for an agent – they should love your work. You are entitled to work with someone who believes in you. Why do business with someone who is...

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.