You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

I went to a women's college. ... it was a little like learning to swim while holding on to the side of the pool; I didn't learn the arm movements until after I graduated, but by that time I was one hell of a kicker.

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

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.

Reading has always been life unwrapped to me, a way of understanding the world and understanding myself through both the unknown and the everyday. If being a parent consists often of passing along chunks of ourselves to unwitting-often unwilling-recipients, then books are, for me, one of the simplest and most sure-fire ways of doing that.

I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.