I think that after a while you realize that your husband can't be all things to you and certainly you don't want the kids to be all things to you, because that would be a terrible weight for them; and that where you really find solace a lot of the time is with your girlfriends.
I'm always keeping an eye on the court. Also, when the members of Congress came to his office during the budget debacle of a year and a half back and said, "We want to de-fund Planned Parenthood," he said, "Not going to happen." Those apparently were more or less his exact words.
You teach your 16-year-old with your heart in your mouth to be a good driver and none of that makes any difference when some drunk comes around a corner and runs a stop sign.
I think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.
I can't think of a single downside to motherhood now.
I can't begin to predict how news will be delivered to readers in, say, 100 years. But I do know one thing that hasn't changed: Whatever the delivery system, whether it's a magazine, book or blog, people like vivid writing, strong stories and credible people. So while the venue is changing rapidly, human nature isn't, which I find soothing.
You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth of understanding you acquire over time with the help of the people who love you that that's when you can really get down to what you really think and believe.
My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.
My mother was an incredibly loving mother.
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and one of the things I like to say is that one of the biggest impediments I had to becoming a successful writer is I had a very happy childhood.
I know a lot and have written a lot and have thought a lot about motherhood.
You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.
A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.
I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.
I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.
My sister is a public school teacher. She makes far far less money than I do, and gets almost no public attention for her work. Yet I believe what she does is infinitely more important and more difficult than what I do.
We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.
Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.
New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.
Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me to worlds I might never have entered and people I might never meet.
I've been a feminist since I was a teenager, but originally it was because I wanted to make the world a better place for me.
I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.
I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.
I think there are some stories that need to be told by a specific person as opposed to in the third person.
If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way.
