Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.

Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.

Do what you love. Live fearlessly and take risks. Don't take no for an answer from anyone - go ahead and prove the naysayers wrong. Believe that anything can be possible.

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.

I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

My first husband was a serial cheater.

Never be with anyone you couldn't imagine yourself being able to live without.

The river asked me who I was to be gazing so longingly into her curving body of cascading dreams and shifting beauty.

I can see her weighing her response, concentrating like a cliff diver studying the ebb and flow of the tide."Um, well... could you at least give me an idea?""Two weeks give or take a week or two.

The interesting thing about averages is that they hide the truth very effectively.

We want revenge. We played well against them last time, and we feel like it's our turn.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

Movies are the greatest art form the world has come up with yet. If you don't use them to the full extent and you don't give people as much as you possibly can, you're doing a disservice to it.

And of course we are familiar with the English common law rule of thumb that said a man could in fact use a stick no bigger than his thumb to discipline his wife and family.

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

I intend to lead my party, which is the only party that has a serious policy on the No. 1 priority of the people and that is the economy.

The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.