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.

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.

You need your freedom. You need to be able to do what you want to do as a journalist, as a person who's speaking for other women as you speak for yourself, and you make a choice. You have to be tough enough to take the consequences of that choice.

How deep is our desire to do better than our mothers--to bring daughters into adulthood strong and fierce yet loving and gentle, adventurous and competitive but still nurturing and friendly, sweet yet sharp. We know as working women that we can't quite have it all, but that hasn't stopped us from wanting it all for them.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

God is a God of Lovingkindness.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.