These are my words; this is their world, a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves, unabashedly, as we go about the business of thinking out loud.

This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.

I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.

The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.