Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and get hurt.

I'd like to learn to meditate with more enthusiasm. I can sit down and get quiet for 20 minutes, but it just has not been a part of my Christianity at all.

Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you’re secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction, but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain?

I had NO interest in being a theologian, especially not a Christian, as I had been raised by progressive atheists. We bowed down every morning to the golden calf of the New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I tried to get my parents to respect and nourish me, let alone delight in me, so even though I secretly loved and believed in the Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift of Desperation, the Cosmic Muffin - I wasn't ready yet to commit myself to the study of a higher power.

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t.