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.

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.

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.

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.

Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.

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.

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.