I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn't write, I'm sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.

God is a God of Lovingkindness.

I know that family life in America is a minefield, an economic trap for women, a study in disappointment for both sexes.

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.

However, there probably is a slight connection between the high-wire, super sensitivity, open to everything and too much, and slightly fragile soul of the artist and the need to self-medicate, which can lead to bad trouble either in drugs, or alcohol. So it's not that there's no connection, it's just that we can't make too much of it because it isn't the addiction that's the issue, it's the fragility of some people who do artistic work, who end up in rehab somewhere or other.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

A person who has no secrets is a liar. We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape.