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It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.

I say, 'I write romance, women's fiction, chick lit.' I think it all fits very comfortably under the same umbrella. Basically, I write books for women - books about relationships: books that make you laugh and sometimes make you cry a little.

I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.