I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says - it makes me choke up - it says, 'I'm a Jersey tomato'... I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it.
I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.
You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don't have enough time to just sit and daydream.
I'm very good at setting goals and deadlines for myself, so I don't really need that from outside.
When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.
When I began to write and used a typewriter, I went through three drafts of a book before showing it to an editor.
I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.
I am such a rewriter; I have so many notebooks filled with drafts you wouldn't believe.
In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.
I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.
Fear is contagious, and those who wish America to become a faith-based society are doing their best to spread it.
I can't relate to people who treat me as a 'famous person.' I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that's what I am. All people are really just regular.
Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?
A good writer is always a people watcher.
When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.
I think divorce is a tragedy, traumatic and horribly painful for everybody. That's why I wrote 'Smart Women.' I want kids to read that and to think what life might be like for their parents. And I want parents to think about what life is like for their kids.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.