Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I'm not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.

In a perfect world, probably we'd never yell, we'd just be firm and dispassionate. But of course, everyone yells at their children.

I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none. When asked what I made of blogs like my own, blogs written by parents about their children, I said, 'A blog like this is narcissism in its most obscene flowering.'

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.

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.

The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That's kind of fun, actually.

I believe the approach we take to talking to our kids about drugs can, in some cases, mean the difference between life and death. So my approach is really simple: I just don't want them to die. And I want them to be able to save someone's life if they see someone die.