Alice McDermott

A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.

I'm not usually drawn to memoir - many run the risk of self-aggrandizement or score-settling.

Loss is inevitable - you have to be blind or naive to think otherwise.

My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.

There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil sources. But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes of the coastal communities that oppose drilling.

I was actually born in New York, and spent some of my childhood in Boston. But my family moved to San Diego when I was 12, and I went to high school here.