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.

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

You have to be a lover of books without expecting more of them than they give - a little pleasure, a little insight, a moment of escape, a deepening of your own humanity. Not much else.

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

If I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't take Freud's books with me, because I've already read them all.

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.

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