You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.

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.

Learning is by nature curiosity... prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.

Nothing lasts forever. Sadness has an end no matter how long it may last. The more you prepare for the end of your sadness, the more happy you will be

The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.

When I'm creatively solving problems, I'm in my sweet spot, and nothing can take me out of that joyful present.

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong... And yet, a person can perform only from strength.

I don't think there is one size that fits all. I've been to too many meetings with journalists who spent the first 10 minutes of the meeting setting up iPad to look like a laptop.