Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

Never apologise for not being someone else. You're bound to find something you're good at, even if it's only writing stories.

I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel.

I think it's more and more important to spend time with your children, because it seems to be harder and harder for them to succeed as their parents have succeeded.

The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.

It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.

My mother raised 14 kids, with little means, from our humble house in Southwest Detroit - and now her daughter, who started school not speaking English, is going to be a congresswoman. It was so important for her to know her strength got me here, and that I'm going to fight every day with her spirit inside me.