Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.

I really consider myself a writer, and a writer who is sometimes a social critic. I'm not an ideologue, I don't join a party. I follow along and take notes. Sometimes I throw in my two cents.

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good.

God is a God of Lovingkindness.

Friendship needs both confidences and confidence in the other's outstretched hand.