On the importance of luck and family connections
"[Success] is so much about luck — that's the real thing — or it's often about class. I mean, if you were born into a family with connections, that is huge.
"[Jules] doesn't [have family connections]. And she doesn't understand that in the beginning when she thought that they all started out the same and that their lives would have a trajectory in sort of lockstep — like the Rockettes, going off into the world kicking at the same pace. ... When my friends and I first moved to the city, everybody lived in these junky little apartments and we all had takeout from Chinese restaurants and we all just sort of lived the same semi-marginal lives. But as time went on, and this is true in this novel, certain things could somehow take effect. Like if you were an artist, instead of getting a job as a paralegal, maybe your parents would give you money and you could go off and rent the cottage of a friend in Maine and you could really write a novel there. Whatever it was, she didn't understand that that was going to happen. She thought it was all even and it was all fair, and of course nothing's even and nothing's fair."
On Jules' struggle with envy for Ethan and Ash
"I was really interested in the subject of envy. But not that kind of big, overt envy, but instead the kind of quiet envy that you might feel for people you really love. She doesn't have — Jules — a big, big talent. So she becomes a therapist. She actually is pretty good at it and her patients love her. But then she looks over and over there in the distance are Ash and Ethan and they are living a life that she always thought was possible for her. So, can you enjoy your life? Is it enough if you're the therapist married to the really nice husband? What's enough to do with your talent and your brain?
“ It's like your life gets put through a funnel, and you see what remains.