I just don't have a lick of optimism left in me.

If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence... eventually, things can go really, really wrong.

Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed.

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.

In a perfect world I think we would microdose with LSD instead of giving teenagers Adderall. But I'd like to see it studied first.

For a couple of months there I was shrieking like a banshee.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

True worship leaders worship the Lord at all times and use songs only when necessary.

Great. He had a ranch with no power, a burgeoning blizzard, animals depending on him and now, a frightened, felonious elf to look after.

Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.

Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.

I dwell in possiblities.

I am my age. I'm not making any effort to change it.

But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.

The principles that make someone a master in the chief executive role deal with whether or not they can thrive in an environment of ongoing duress, and teach others how to do so.

I always thought that my canine family tended to view me as the funny-looking two-legged dog who runs the can opener.

When the path ignites a soul, there's no remaining in place. The foot touches ground, but not for long.