My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper.

I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too?

There is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels.

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.

I've never really been interested in recreational drug use.

I’ve sometimes thought that it’s only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.

I really hate alcohol. I hate it because it's linked so closely to sexual assault in our culture.