You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

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.

This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.

I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.

Somewhere between a third and a quarter of all people living in America today were born between 1946 and 1965 and if you think you're tired of hearing about us, you should try being one of us.

Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and its good opinion...What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

We almost manage to forget that things happen that we don't anticipate.