When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's so beautiful.' I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him.

The Q I loathe and despise, the Q every single writer I know loathes and despises, is this one: 'Where,' the reader asks, 'do you get your ideas?' It's a simple question, and my usual response is a kind of helpless, 'I don't know.'

I have two daughters and I have done everything in my power to prevent them from assimilating, even being aware of, my idiocy about my weight.

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.

It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.

So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.