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I like writing about teenagers because it's a time of great change and conflict. Up to then, you accept what your parents tell you.

Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I don't feel everybody can connect to.

I like to write about teenagers because it's such an uncertain and dramatic time.

My parents had a strong impact on who I am today. My mother and dad both encouraged us to think about the long term - where you wanted to be - to think about education, to think about what is right and what is wrong, and to do things that will help you in the long run.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

I'm obsessed with adolescence. I love to write about people in their 20s. It's such a fraught and exciting and kind of horrible time.

That's the thing that I've always kind of kept in the back of my head in writing about teens, that everything is so important, all the time, every day. Every day of your life, you're changing and making decisions and everything is an emergency to you.

I have a fondness for writing about precocious, troubled teenagers, who are alienating, but kind of endearing. It's from remembering so clearly that time in my own life. I experienced myself as more dramatically troubled than I was, but I just remember how it felt.

I'm really connected to people, and my relationships with people are paramount, so I write about relationships, particularly strong female ones. In my family, there were six girls born in five years. We were best friends. And my parents raised all of us as first-class citizens.

I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority.