Jean Hanff Korelitz

“Naturally, no march on Washington would be complete without its counter-demonstration.”

“You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a version of me who didn't care about theater, who didn't read Playbill and watch the Tony Awards, or get why Bob Fosse's choreography was so groundbreaking that all you need to say is 'Fosse hands' and theater people know what you mean.”

“A successful birth is not a birth without drugs or monitors or surgery. A successful birth is when you're alive and the baby's alive.”

“People need a narrative, and if there isn't one on offer, they make one up.”

“Like many people, I have a fascination with lies and the people who tell them. I wouldn't say I've never told a lie, but I don't think I've ever told one without both assuming I would be found out and feeling absolutely rotten about it.”

“Pacing is not the sort of thing you can plan out beforehand, but you're always aware of it as you write, because you need to make constant decisions.”

“A good story, a story resonant and remarkable, can be remade endlessly to tell new sides of itself for new generations of readers.”

“I was 11 years old and horse-obsessed. New York City was an unfortunate place for a girl like me to be growing up.”

“Serious writers pretend they don't care about film adaptations of their work, but it's a colossal lie: We all care.”

“When you get right down to it, there's something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudging whatever real-world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next.”

“I'm not in a position to tell anyone anything about how to live his or her life, but I think it's worth noting that no one can lie to us as effectively as we can lie to ourselves. We know exactly what to say! And I do think that women, even extremely smart women, can be very, very vulnerable to men.”

“I started thinking about what I've always been interested in: how people can't see things that are right in front of them. All you have to do is read the papers to see endless examples of smart people who can't see the nose on their faces.”

“A mutt is a dog. He is the stuff of dogginess, a creature allied to species, not breed, and untrammeled by human hand or preference.”

“As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who appear formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is watching them rise again, and seeing how they've changed and grown, if indeed they have.”

“All these years, her sole objective had been to keep still and hope no one would ever know. She had been a mistress of stillness. She had mastered the simulation of peace without a wisp of real peace, like a nun from a silent order who was screaming inside her head, or a yogi racked with pain. How she had managed to fool anyone, let alone everyone, mystified her (how obtuse people were!) and, oddly, made her extraordinarily bitter. Because the price of her gift for evasion was to have no one, not one person, who understood how horrible she felt. All the time. Absolutely all the time.”

“Personally, I would love to see every gun on the planet disappear.”

“Did I become a theater person right then, sitting in the Imperial Theater, waiting for the high piccolo note at the start of 'Pippin'? Maybe.”

“I say that glorious prose is a fine and laudable thing, but without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca. Simply put, the best books have both, and the best writers disparage neither.”

“Every so often in life, you encounter a brilliant idea. Usually, at least in my case, it's somebody else's idea.”

“The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.”