Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel anything you read all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal or having any import to the world at large as opposed to men's work which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Parents it seems have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.

I would love to spend all my time writing to you I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind all that weighs on my heart all that gives air to my soul phantoms of art dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

And they were writing scripts where Christine had hit the glass ceiling. And I always thought Christine would never hit the glass ceiling. I thought her dreams would take her. Maybe her dreams wouldn't take her where she wanted but she still had her dreams.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn't think I'd have the luxury of doing something like that because I didn't know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored but I had dreams for singing or writing.

My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.

I might be writing what people expect me to write writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that I started working with my dreams because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

My father I liked but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

We are weak writing is difficult but for my own sake I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships help one another and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection the past then lives in your words and you are free.

All stories interest me and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice loyalty violence death political and social issues freedom.

I got that experience through dating dozens of men for six years after college getting an entry level magazine job at 21 working in the fiction department at Good Housekeeping and then working as a fashion editor there as well as writing many articles for the magazine.

Taylor Swift dates guys so she can write a breakup song about them. I don't think she's dating for love - I think she's dating for creativity. So let's get her off the market and put her in dating detox. If she really wants love she has to stop writing music about them.

My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten and I didn't live with him after that though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It occurred to me then that my dad was kind of special he's still one of my favorite writers.

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely surprisingly good fortune with readers and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

I remember once giving my dad some drawings and writings and said 'If you could just give these to the publisher that would be great.' And I was about five!

People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.

I remember once we got an interview and he said 'Dad these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.