I love reader mail, and I do read it, but I won't read hate mail.

Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

There's nothing I find quite as annoying as the phrase 'I told you so.'

Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift.

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.

It's incredibly important to me that my children don't put anything in their bodies that they haven't tested first - that's how you end up dying.