At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.

Pulling at the hem of my emotion was the creeping sense that it might well take until 2036 for this child in my arms to feel a fraction of what I already felt for her.

It's easy to love kids who make you feel competent.

Pel-i-cans, their beaks hold more than their bellies can.

Alcohol is the number one addictive drug in our day.

I've got foundation jokes, the ones that got me where I am, so everything I do just builds on top of that.

When I believe in something, I'm very passionate. I don't take 'no' for an answer.

Each one writes history according to his convenience.

The family is on its way out; couples go next; then no more keeping cats or parrots.

Urgency is insecurity.

I'm not the type that's going to sit and preach to people if they don't need it just because I've been around the block a few times.

I realized that Judaism required me to give up something that meant too much to me...Bacon cheeseburgers.

We are only as good as our most extreme experiences

How can you have any regret when everything worked out fine? But why I think it worked out fine is due to the lessons I learned along the way. And one of those involves listening to experts.