I'd never written nonfiction about the war on drugs, but I know a tremendous amount about it: I taught a class on it for seven years. I was putting into words the stuff I was teaching, and I was writing it up and thought, "Dude, you're writing a book."

Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?

I tell myself that after four children my belly is already so stretched and flabby that I have to do origami to get my pants buttoned. One more pregnancy and I'd be doomed to elastic waists for the rest of my life.

I am a very nonspiritual person.

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.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

Lots of medications work for a month, or a year, and then stop working.