I think our material is our lives. That's part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.

They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.

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

Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days.

It's true, we tend to write about the same thing over and over again because this is our trauma. If I had been in World War II, I might have been writing about D-Day over and over again.

People always think their world is coming to an end if they're exposed, and of course it isn't coming to an end; it goes right on exactly the way it always was.