Amy Bloom

I didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home. ”

My target audience is anyone who finds the world interesting and human behavior fascinating, terrible, inspiring, funny, and occasionally, mysterious. ”

My greatest surprise was that so much of what we think is common sense is just prejudice, and so much of what we think is scientific fact is about as scientific as the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. ”

I was the kind of reader in smudged pink harlequin glasses sitting on the cool, dusty floor of the Arrandale public library, standing at the edge of the playground, having broken a tooth in dodge ball, and lying under my covers with a flashlight. ”

My ideal meal varies, depending on the time of year. Lobster on a deck overlooking a beach at sunset is one - but all my kids have to be there, because they are all lobster-lovers. Making a bolognese sauce over pappardelle for my husband on a winter evening, because he loves my bolognese sauce and it's his comfort food. ”

Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage - you get to see your characters in a different way - like with lights. ”

As children, we think our mother has always been a mother, but it is just one of the roles you may have the opportunity to play. They don't define you as a human being. ”

My mother's favorite photograph was one of herself at twenty-four years old, unbearably beautiful, utterly glamorous, in a black-straw cartwheel hat, dark-red lipstick, and a smart black suit, her notepad on a cocktail table. I know nothing about that woman. ”

It is a wonderful, moving, heart-filling experience to sit with the man or woman you love and your beloved children and know that all are happy to be just where they are with each other and loving one another. This doesn't happen very often. ”

If you're an American reader, you can love short stories the way other Americans love baseball; this is our game, people! We have more than two hundred years of know-how and knack, of creativity. ”