A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.

Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that.

Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.

My mother was an incredibly loving mother.

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.

When I quit The New York Times to be a fulltime mother, the voices of the world said I was nuts....But if success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your soul, it is not success at all.