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.

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?

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.

The study of man is the study of his extensions.

I don't think there's any question that someday somebody who is innocent will be executed in this country again.

I think I was technically uncredited as Local #1, because there were three of us. But I had the most lines [in My Sweet Charlie].

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil.

Instead of lamenting your fate, create your world.

If we allow public funds to be used to support our relatively benign, morally grounded schools, we will have to allow those public funds to be used for any type of private school.

For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.

If your life is worth thinking about,it is worth writing about.

My name is Jimmy, but my friends just call me the hideous penguin boy.