Jennifer Weiner

“Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.”

“Right now women are using surrogates because they can't be pregnant. What worries me is the possibility that soon they'll use surrogates because they don't want to be pregnant.”

“I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'”

“I also believe that if you're really a writer, you'll write, and that nobody could stop you.”

“If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the 'Times' might notice you.”

“Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.”

“Every mother I've ever met, pretty much without exception, is doing the best job she can ever do.”

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning.”

“The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying.”

“There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.”

“Having a day job again I found really kind of fueled my fiction, because it became almost this forbidden thing where I had to sneak off and do it in private.”

“Whenever people with money have power over people with less money, you have the potential for exploitation.”

“mooo," she said... "I mean mmmm," she moaned. Louder this time. Goddamn Dr. Seuss is ruining my sex life.”

“Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.”

“I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life.”

“My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.”

“I went to Princeton, I minored in women's studies.”

“Money is a tremendous advantage in just about everything, but in terms of reproduction, if you're a poor woman and you are infertile, it's like too bad, so sad. And if you are a wealthy woman, you can kind of buy whatever you want.”

“Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating.”

“People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say.'”