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.

Familiarity breeds content.

I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.

I go online all the time, I just don't read about myself. I read a fashion website called Go Fug Yourself. I actually correspond with the Fug Girls and that's great.

Now, a lot of people are challenged by the fact that a record number of people in their sixties have living parents, and a record number of people in their sixties have kids who may still depend upon them.

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

There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation's public school system entitled "Savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.