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 friendly to me, then we are clearly soul mates.

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

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

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

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

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

I don't know much about any of the Hasidim because the men won't talk to me because I'm a woman, and the women won't talk to me because, while I am Jewish, I'm not Hasidic.

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

It's the differences in people that help you realize who you are. Even if we silently pass each other on the street.

With apologies to all my past boyfriends, I never loved a man the way I loved my old apartment.

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 the real estate agents would have you believe it is.

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

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.

Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.

Why e-mail a full emotional statement when, instead, you can text a totally insignificant and ambiguous half-considered phrase?

An ellipsis is a giant ocean of possibilities.

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 read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.

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.

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 are so many layers to it.

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.

In the wintertime I like macaroni and cheese.

Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer.

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.

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

When we are young - or even 32 - we often say 'yes' to everything because we're worried that we won't know what we'll like if we don't try it.

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.

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

Your family is unavoidable. You cannot escape them or trade them in for another family. You also can't change them... but you can change your response to them.

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.

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

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

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 years, and yet, I once saw Donald Trump from behind in an office building and the first thing that flashed in my mind was his hair looked like that onion loaf.

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

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

I'm pretty pro-food.

I've always been an old soul.

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

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

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 to agents.

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

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 ambivalent about you and your art?

People are branded as either 'fat' or 'skinny' from an early age. You sort of never shake it, even if you end up losing weight.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

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

It's good to pass on stories.

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

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.

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.

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 of amazing work out there. These women are writing hard. There's much to be said. We're on it, chief.

I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing.