Growing up in Vancouver in the 1950s, I was often capricious and temperamental, quick to laugh, even quicker to feel despair, prone to flailing my arms, pouting and crying when things didn't go my way, or I thought something was unfair, or I was bullied by my sisters.

The problem with mental illness, as opposed to physical illness, is that it involves wrong thinking or impaired insight. You're not thinking correctly.

I was a late bloomer on the career front.

Our youth-oriented society does not have a clearly defined place for the older woman.

I was actually born in Baltimore! Although I moved away when I was quite young and consider Chicago to be my hometown, Baltimore is sentimental to me, and I still keep in touch with family friends I knew as a little girl.

The proper care and rearing of a child is integral to their development. It breaks my heart to know that some children's futures are being destroyed within their own homes.

I'm not at all an active feminist. On the contrary, I'm a bourgeois. I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day.

I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes, but taking different angles on them.