Jean Hanff Korelitz

Did I become a theater person right then, sitting in the Imperial Theater, waiting for the high piccolo note at the start of 'Pippin'? Maybe.

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.

I say that glorious prose is a fine and laudable thing, but without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca. Simply put, the best books have both, and the best writers disparage neither.

A good story, a story resonant and remarkable, can be remade endlessly to tell new sides of itself for new generations of readers.

When you get right down to it, there's something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudging whatever real-world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.

A successful birth is not a birth without drugs or monitors or surgery. A successful birth is when you're alive and the baby's alive.

Most of all, I am struck by an irony central to the lot of a purebred dog: As it attains the hallmarks of its breed, it seems to simultaneously relinquish its basic dogginess, until it is less a dog than a Pomeranian, Collie or Bloodhound.

The implication of AKC registration is that a dog who has it is better than a dog who hasn't.

A mutt is a dog. He is the stuff of dogginess, a creature allied to species, not breed, and untrammeled by human hand or preference.

To me, respect for human life begins with making it more difficult to obtain an inanimate object that is designed to snuff it out.

Naturally, no march on Washington would be complete without its counter-demonstration.

Personally, I would love to see every gun on the planet disappear.

Every so often in life, you encounter a brilliant idea. Usually, at least in my case, it's somebody else's idea.

My dog is vicious to the uninvited guest, lavishly affectionate to the invited one, and so freakishly acute that he has mastered the English language.

I was 11 years old and horse-obsessed. New York City was an unfortunate place for a girl like me to be growing up.

You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a version of me who didn't care about theater, who didn't read Playbill and watch the Tony Awards, or get why Bob Fosse's choreography was so groundbreaking that all you need to say is 'Fosse hands' and theater people know what you mean.

I made it to London aged six, an event I recorded in my diary with coloured markers to convey my sense of occasion. And in 1983, after graduating from college, I returned to spend two years at Cambridge University.

The first time I went to Helene Hanff's apartment at 305 East 72nd Street, it was 1977, and I was a 16-year-old girl who wanted to be a writer.

My first three novels were all the subjects of intensely exciting flurries of calls from producers and even stars' production companies, and once someone actually hired a screenwriter to adapt one of my books - but it all came to nothing, so I tried not to get too excited when a Hollywood suitor came calling for 'Admission,' my fourth novel.

Serious writers pretend they don't care about film adaptations of their work, but it's a colossal lie: We all care.

People need a narrative, and if there isn't one on offer, they make one up.

I started thinking about what I've always been interested in: how people can't see things that are right in front of them. All you have to do is read the papers to see endless examples of smart people who can't see the nose on their faces.

I'm not in a position to tell anyone anything about how to live his or her life, but I think it's worth noting that no one can lie to us as effectively as we can lie to ourselves. We know exactly what to say! And I do think that women, even extremely smart women, can be very, very vulnerable to men.

Pacing is not the sort of thing you can plan out beforehand, but you're always aware of it as you write, because you need to make constant decisions.