Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women."

[Commencement Address, Wellesley College, 1996]

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.

New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

It seemed to me that the desire to get married - which, I regret to say, I believe is basic and primal in women - is followed almost immediately by an equally basic and primal urge - which is to be single again