I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Choose the kids. There will be plenty of time later to choose work.

Women writers of all people should know better than to pigeonhole women, put them in little groups, the smart one, the sweet one.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around, and nearly every book represents what my son's third grade teacher refers to as a "teachable moment.

Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.