Meg Wolitzer

“Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.”

“I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.”

“These are old issues. Female power, misogyny, the treatment of women, how you make meaning in the world. And these are all issues that I've been thinking about and writing about for a very long time.”

“The mystery of desire was way beyond the conceptual abilities of Jules Jacobson. It was like ... robotics. Just another subject that she couldn’t understand at all.”

“I think a lot of the dull parts of first drafts come from a kind of over-managing, intrusive writer who wants to direct traffic. The idea of taking out the parts that the reader could infer is very liberating, and it's weirdly part of radicalizing your work: it allows you to go to new places fast.”

“We all want to write the kind of book that we want to read. If you put in the things that you are thinking about and create characters who feel like they could live - at least for me, that's the way I want to write.”

“It's hard for me to feel bad when I'm writing well.”

“People say, write what you know, but it's really, write about what obsesses you. Write about what you're thinking about all the time.”

“I love guacamole and think about it a lot when I'm supposed to be thinking about language.”

“Some people are uncomfortable saying what they feel.”

“Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.”

“But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of scorn for money except as it allowed them to live the way they wanted to live.”

“In 'The Interestings' I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.”