Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us.

The problem with freedom is that you just can't go back. Once people see what it means to be free people, you can't go back. So they're going to keep nattering on about this and that, and maybe they'll make another stab at de-funding the fabulous Planned Parenthood or something of the sort. To my mind, it's just not going to work.

My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.

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.

There are a million moving parts to raising kids, and you can't always anticipate them all, especially when they are teenagers and their peers play such a huge role in their lives. If you offer independence, there is one kind of pitfall; if you shelter them too much, there is another. And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.