It's like they say in the Internet world — if you're doing the same thing today you were doing six months ago, you're doing the wrong thing. Parents can learn a lot from that.

Love is a balance between independence and interdependence. In love, you want to be independent and interdependent. You want to be a little bit selfish and a little bit selfless. Love can be an antidote to loneliness, as long as there is some aloneness in it.

Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.

You may be frustrated with religion, but don't take that out on God.

Adam and Eve - and especially Eve - are victims of the greatest character assassination the world has ever known. Eve is not secondary. Eve, if anything, is the great initiator in the story. She's the first independent woman. For me, rediscovering that Eve was the greatest bad**s women of all time was a revelation.

One of the things I've learned is to be much more open about my frailties and about our failures, because when you show your kids how you can resolve conflict in your life in real time, you're giving them confidence that when they have conflicts, they can push through them.

One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us?