Quotes from Kristin Gore

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.

When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.

After writing for TV for a while, I got sort of fed up with all of the cancellations and the volatility in that industry. Also, you're always writing for someone else's character and story, and I really wanted to develop my own.

Both of my parents have great senses of humor.

'Jitterbug Perfume' is one of my favorite books.

I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.

I consciously decided to make both 'Sammy's Hill' and 'Sammy's House' more of a warm satire and not go the route of writing a dark and bitter book about D.C.

I can't look at people's wrists. Something about the veins makes me weak. My siblings used to torture me with that because they knew it was the thing I couldn't handle. They would stick their wrists in my face.

I like my leaders smart and serious. I don't need a stand-up comic.

The wrists, the Achilles' tendons, and the neck are some of the weakest points of the human body, so a lot of people have phobias about those things. I can't deal with the undersides of wrists.

I had lesser friends who would pretend to be interested in a night of catching up and then morph into giggly backstabbers at the first whiff of Polo Aftershave--woman who were lightning fast with the put-down joke or dismissive wave, whatever it took to seem more pretty or witty or larger chested to the nighly swarm of male barflies.

School field trips had always been a welcome escape from routine, particularly when they'd involved aquariums or grown-ups dressed in colonial costumes.

She flipped through them again, quickly enough that she created a moving picture of her granddaughter's last few weeks—a cascading waterfall of captured moments.

We don't talk about things like that." Jiminy stared back, then sneezed powerfully, grateful that her body instinctively rejected such attitudes.

Jiminy had held vague ambitions of becoming a private eye or a feisty attorney. But these aspirations had taken a backseat to the day-to-day responsibilities of just getting by.

Life with an unreliable mother had robbed her of the sense of security necessary for upward mobility. It had rendered her anxious and shortsighted.

Her growing certainty that she was withholding some essential part of herself had filled her with quiet desperation.

Bo felt sorry for Jiminy that she had to expend so much effort to ask a simple question. What a difficult way to go through life. He had his challenges, but most of them felt imposed from the outside, not created within.

Is that a Polaroid camera?" Bo asked. He was pointing to the camera dangling from her neck. Jiminy had brought it with her from Chicago, to document her decline. She touched it now, and nodded.

My dad has a dry, deadpan sense of humor, and my mom has an unexpected, wacky take on things. They really encouraged laughing at ourselves and the weirdness of situations that come up growing up in politics.

Any writing teacher tells you to write what you know, and for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well.

In actuality, 'Sammy's House' can and should be read as an entirely fictional comedy set in a fascinating political world.

When my father became vice president, I was a sophomore in high school. I'd do things like go on a run with my soccer team and purposely dodge the security van. Then my parents compromised with the Secret Service when I went to college. I just had a panic button in my dorm room, so if I pressed that, they'd be there within 2 or 3 minutes.

I make things up for a living. It would be pretty boring to just fictionalize real people.