RAINBOW ROWELL

I definitely had a hard time leaving for college because I'm not much of a risk-taker.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

With 'Attachments,' my goal was to write a really good romantic comedy. I wanted the reader to be smiling throughout.

I was in my mid 20s when email finally took off. Until then, the phone was my primary way of connecting with the people in my life.

I can't seem to help writing love stories. I definitely crave romance. When I was young, I craved romance in books, but I didn't want to read just romance - love plays such a big part in our lives, it shouldn't be cut out and restricted to its own fiction.

When you actually fall in love, no one sees that other person the way that you do.

A landline is an anchor - busy signals, long distance bills, missed connections and all.

Attraction is what happens between you. It's not universal. And it's not conventional. And thank God for that.

Having a conversation on a landline is more intimate than talking to someone in person. Your voices are so clear and close - you're in each other's heads.

It's very difficult, I think, especially on two cellphones, to have a romantic conversation.

I find love stories satisfying when you can see the work - when you can really watch people find each other and fall in love, a little bit at a time. I like slow burns. Falling in love is so good; why would you want to rush it?

When I watch a romantic comedy, I feel like they're selling something that doesn't exist. Two beautiful, but extremely unpleasant, people are terrible to each other for an hour, accidentally kiss, then decide to like each other during an extremely vague montage. That isn't how people fall in love.

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.

As I moved to less and less diverse places in my life, I realized that white people don't talk about race amongst themselves!

I enjoy stories about thin women - I read them frequently. I enjoy them; I root for those characters, but I always feel like there are enough of them out there and there are enough of them in the spotlight.

In 'Attachments,' which is told from a male point of view, people asked me if a man would really think that much about whether a woman likes him. But I have a husband and three brothers, and they're all like that.

My favorite Starbucks is nice - Omaha Starbucks stores tend to be friendlier than big-city ones, and the baristas are especially lovely at mine - but it's still a Starbucks.

When you're a woman, you have to work harder to get a laugh... I follow so many hilarious women on Twitter. It's a daily reminder that women get to be funny.

Our cellphones can do everything, but they're bad at letting us talk to each other.

When 'Attachments' came out and people liked it, I'd have a warm feeling of having made a connection.

With fandom, people are sensitive, and sometimes defensive, about their experiences.

I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?

I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks.

I think, when I was younger, I believed in - and yearned for - conventional beauty. I thought there was a spectrum from ugly to beautiful, and that you could objectively plot everyone you saw along it.