We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized.

I've always been interested in tht notion of what is authentic and how we define that and why our culture imposes certain emotions and emotional constraints onto experiences.

Being in the entertainment industry in L.A. is the equivalent to being in the publishing industry in New York. You don't ever have to hangout with anybody else.

What amazes me is when I see people in their twenties who have families or live a life that seems of a much older person. But that's such a demographic, a socio-economic, cultural, class thing.

There may well be a few extremists out there somewhere calling for a militant, women-only utopia, but why should this be the definition of 'feminist' when it's already the definition of 'silly'?

Novelty has a way of intensifying memory. The less often you do something, the deeper the memory burrows in.

Life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally — and sometimes maddeningly — who we are.

In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told.

My goal in life is to be content. By that I don't mean "fine" or "basically satisfied." I don't mean settling. I mean, for last of better terms, feeling like I'm in the right life.

At some point in my early forties I realized that my primary goal in just about any verbal exchange is to lighten the mood.

We use our gadgets for distraction and entertainment. We use them to avoid work while giving the impression that we're actually working hard.

Have you ever wonder about the misery of sleep?

Poverty must be eliminated or else the honour of humanity will vanish!

Fear and hopelessness washed over her. She was looking her own mortality in the face, and it was a horrifying thing to do.

Conservative humor is frankly harder than liberal humor. You get points for just being liberal. You can get more points if you make fun of your own side sometimes.

Some of the best advice I've had comes from junior officers and enlisted men.

Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately.

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.

I would never know how that person felt when they first heard my song. They coulda been at rock bottom and my song could have literally been the thing that saved them, but I would never know that.

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.