Our culture is so celebrity-obsessed that for individuals to show they matter, they need to display their intimacy to fame.
At the beginning, I really wanted to be home with my kid. I was a product of my generation. But in the suburbs, you are very isolated, really alone.
I was always the weirdo who wanted to have an egalitarian service in synagogue and felt I was always going against the grain.
I must have been yearning for some Jewish content beyond my genetic makeup because soon after my 21st birthday, I noticed I was no longer dating WASPs.
We joined a Conservative synagogue. I began learning through engagement, rote and reading. Suddenly, I belonged... well, to the extent that a novelist can ever feel she is part of a group; we may be part of a minyan, but we're not fully merged into the community.
There are so many different worlds in Long Island. That's why it's so fascinating. Between Great Neck and Montauk, there are 10,000 worlds.
Whether you're an obstetrician or a third-grade teacher or a real estate agent, you know when you're doing good work. You're passionate about it.
Just as you can accept Miss Marple going to tea with the vicar, there's no reason why Long Island can't have a universality to it.
My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.
I like to show ordinary people reacting to extraordinary circumstances. It's an opportunity for adventure, and I like women to have adventures. There's been far too little of it with women.
For a novelist, no matter what, it's a complete work, even if it's not published. But if you write a screenplay, and it's not performed, then it's a sad and frustrating experience.
I hate when people say, 'Oh, they laughed all the way to the bank.' That's nonsense because the most cynical, unhappy people are Hollywood screenwriters. They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for work that's never made.
