Your basic extended family today includes your ex-husband or -wife, your ex's new mate, your new mate, possibly your new mate's ex and any new mate that your new mate's ex has acquired.

I have one rule I live by: Only do what you can do. That neans you're never looking outside for what's popular; you're always looking inside for what's true.

In Los Angeles, by the time you're 35, you're older than most of the buildings.

New Yorkers are born all over the country, and then they come to New York City and it hits them: Oh, that’s who I am.

Someone will always tell you what you want to hear.

in the family I grew up in, being called boring was like being called an ax murderer.

There is something fantastic about getting divorced. Everyone should do it to experience the extraordinary sense of freedom after being in marriage jail.

Children are a house's enemy. They don't mean to be - they just can't help it. It's their enthusiasm, their energy, their naturally destructive tendencies.

writing is how I understand everything that happens. Writing is the only way I know to move on.

One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria.

As complicated as joint custody is, it allows the delicious contradiction of having children and maintaining the intimacy of life-before-kid s.

Never compare your grief.You - and only youwalk your path.

Who do I think would appreciate my book?I’m surprised anybody does. Oops, did I say that out loud?

I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn't work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.

Earth's dispossessed are vulnerable targets for extremists: those who teach that global justice is meaningless; that satisfaction can come only in violence, division, and intellectual isolation.

When you are optimistic, when you are not complaining, when you look at the good side of your life, everybody loves you.

You can’t jump for the stars if your feet hurt.

If you look at where presidents come from, they're former governors or senators.

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.