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.

Perhaps my children will one day pledge their loyalty to the Republican Party. Or perhaps they'll dismiss my liberalism as mild pap, and become anarchists. Either way may well be a reaction to my manipulation, my values. We are all the product of the indoctrination we received at the hands of our parents, even when we are repudiating that ideology.

If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence... eventually, things can go really, really wrong.

If God were like a Star Wars Force linking all consciousness, I supposed I could maybe believe that. But let's just say I'm not going to be running off to India to join an ashram anytime soon.

There is no fundamental truth and there's nothing to be connected to: I just believe that [LSD] makes you feel better.

You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.

I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that.