“Among other things, Marching Band forms state that if my kid starts acting like a li'l jerkface on a trip, Marching Band can call and command me to pick up my li'l jerkface.”

“Being a writer is great, and being a parent is great, and I hate Marching Band.”

“I always knew I'd keep at it with the plodding doggedness that I used to master lump-less gravy and wriggle out of fitness classes; I always knew I'd get a zillion rejection slips. I figured I'd write part time while working various full-time office jobs, and maybe, maybe in my 50s, I'd be able to quit and try writing full time.”

“I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.”

“I guess you could say that no matter what the characters are enduring, I try to make them retain their humanity. Their self-absorbed, grouchy, selfish, aggravating humanity.”

“I like the idea of federal employees licensed to carry weapons who are also heavily medicated; it just works for me on all sorts of levels.”

“I love interviews, meeting fans, teaching workshops, giving speeches... all of it.”

“I love traveling, but I love the bum I married, and the bums I gave birth to, more. And the dogs. I love them, too.”

“I might occasionally forget how to open a car door and have too many shower curtains, but I've got some standards.”

“I once came back from a book tour where sleek black cars driven by nice men in black suits waited for me at every hotel, took me to every signing, brought me back, opened car doors for me. They were great. I was great. It was a wonderful tour.”

“I own two beautiful homes, and I'm always half-expecting the cops to pull in, seize me with firm compassion, and escort me out.”

“I used to be a model and a medical test subject, though never at the same time. And since we didn't have much money when I was a kid, I know how to fish and hunt for my supper. And I used to win awards in speech in high school, which comes in handy when I speak to 200 people at a writers' conference.”

“I wrote for free for, like, fifteen years; I could redo my parlor in rejection slips. It would be surprisingly tasteful - they use nice paper.”

“I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'”

“I'll cough up the bitter truth right now, at the risk of losing my Feminism Club Decoder Ring: I didn't go see 'Inside Out' for Amy Poehler, though she's terrific. I went to see my dark prince, Lewis Black.”

“I'm a sucker for the big, gruff, distant, emotionally closed-off hero who sloooowly warms up to the feisty, awesome, sweet heroine.”

“I'm more to my family than a wonderful, luminous cook. I'm also a wonderful, luminous butler and a wonderful, luminous chauffer. And checkbook. I'm a luminous checkbook, too.”

“I'm really fortunate that I type 120 words a minute.”

“I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'”

“Magic: The Gathering is like Dungeons and Dragons if D&D was played with cards and didn't take 18 weeks.”

“My 20s were a blizzard of rejection slips.”

“The silly antics that would get me in trouble at school have put me on the best-seller list. So I guess the moral here is ignore your teach... never mind. That's not the moral. Probably.”

“When I first quit my day job, I was terrified. I called my editors and said I'm trying to make a go of this, and they threw every contract at me they could. And for two years, I had a book or an anthology out every month.”

“When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.”