Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained.

No one thinks anything silly is suitable when they are an adolescent. Such an enormous share of their own behavior is silly that they lose all proper perspective on silliness, like a baker who is nauseated by the sight of his own eclairs. This provides another good argument for the emerging theory that the best use of cryogenics is to freeze all human beings when they are between the ages of twelve and nineteen.

We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of the book.

And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

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.