“'Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever' was inspired by a combination of my grandson, my son, and myself - all those times when each of us has decided that we're just not going to get into trouble anymore. But it's so hard to be good all of the time!”

“Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced.”

“Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.”

“Don't let anything sneak past you. Don't say, 'Well, oh, I'll take a picture and put it in my photograph album.' I notice it now. I love it now. And I am grateful for it now.”

“I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.”

“I could be such a wonderful wife to another wife's husband.”

“I didn't get one word published until I was well into my 30s. But I always tried.”

“In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.”

“Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.”

“Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.”

“Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it.”

“Most of the characters I have in my children's books are grouchy or annoyed about something or are calling each other unfriendly names. Like my own kids, they're not honeys and sweetie pies and little angels. They're kids. Sloppy, dirty, stinky.”

“My favorite was 'The Secret Garden'. I loved it, and I think it's had a big influence on all of my characters. 'The Secret Garden' is about transgressions and imperfect people.”

“My Girl Scout leader. She told me if I listened more and talked less, I could grow up to be a good writer. I thought that was interesting advice at age 12.”

“My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page.”

“My mother was born in June and later, feeling a vacancy, chose her birth month for her middle name. Marry to marry, had kids because that's what was done. Liked crossword puzzles, liked lilac trees, liked baking in the sun, and liked Bing Crosby.”

“My mother would have been so crazy about my grandchildren. She was a fabulous grandmother, and she would have been absolutely crazed as a great-grandmother. I miss that part of her.”

“Nobody who knows me and loves me dearly would ever call me adaptable or flexible. I'm not.”

“One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.”

“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.”

“Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?”

“The best I can do is, it's like a 'ding!' You're writing, and then something starts falling into place, and you hear or feel a ding. And it just feels - it's going to be okay.”

“We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.”

“What kind of grandmother am I? I'm a 'three-dessert' grandmother. I'm a 'let's just skip the bath tonight, honey, watch another video' grandmother.”

“When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead.”

“You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.”