You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

What I'm doing is writing stories about women who care about justice. They are women who think about the difference between right and wrong, what's legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral.

And when I look at my mother, I reflect on her strength and endurance. She's cranky sometimes, but she is lovable and loving. I'd be happy to be there at 86.

I was a lawyer and I loved it, but my Francesca was born, and a divorce followed way too soon after.

Rob loves my mum, I think the most in the whole world. They are two peas in a pod and I'm the one on the outside. It makes me even more in love with my husband and with my mum, because she can be bonkers and unconventional and it can be embraced.

A successful marriage isn't necessarily one that lasts until you're dead.

I think empathy is romantic. I think humor is romantic. Kindness is romantic. I think those kind of gestures of caring and love are romantic.

Back in the Seventies, we had a romantic, poetic vision of the future, like it was in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' It felt as if everything was still ahead of us.