In marriage, it’s best to keep perspective. Get out of your head and get some perspective.
My interest is in turning over a rock and seeing what’s underneath. It’s a personality trait more than anything; it’s what made me want to become a crime reporter, even though I was not suited for it personality-wise.
Books and movies are kind of my two great loves. I don’t have too many other actual hobbies. That’s pretty much it.
I am a great believer in jobs for teens. They teach important life lessons, build character, and inflict just the right amount of humiliation necessary for future success in the working world.
The newspaper industry was built on the penny dreadfuls.
I’m a true-crime addict. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but I can’t stop.
I feel like I need to give people a note with the book that says, ‘I’m OK, no worries!’
One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn’t given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of ‘Gone Girl,’ after you’ve already read it and you know everything, and say, ‘Check – check – yes, she gave us that information.’
To me, marriage is the ultimate mystery.
As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.
I’ve always been a mystery fan. My very first grown-up book, I distinctly remember going to the library and my mom helping me pick out an Agatha Christie book. I was in fifth grade or something and very proud of being in the adult fiction aisles. I tore through ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles.’
A theme that has always interested me is how women express anger, how women express violence. That is very much part of who women are, and it’s so unaddressed. A vast amount of literature deals with cycles of violence about men, antiheroes. Women lack that vocabulary.
There’s nothing lovelier than having a newborn and still plotting a dark conspiracy.
You don’t normally see incredibly ugly people who’ve gone missing and it becomes a sensation.
I’m not hyper-opinionated, but when I do have an opinion, I’m very stubborn, and I want to persuade everyone to my point of view.
I read all kinds of novels, as long as they’re good.
The midwest is great because it hasn’t been entirely claimed. There’s more room to write about it; it’s harder to write about New York, because even if you’ve never been there, you think you know what it’s like. To do it in any sort of fresh way is trickier.
I am not someone who has hobbies. I have tried knitting, and I can’t figure it out.
I’ve wondered if ‘Harry Potter’ would have been as big if it was ‘Harriet Potter.’ Now that I’ve written a screenplay – and raising a son in particular – I’m looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen.
My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn’t form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.
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