Every great culture has cared a lot, one way or another, about the fate of its girls.

It can be demonstrated from history that no society has ever survived after its family life deteriorated.

Pubescent girls, it seems, are manifestly more likely to exhibit extreme and bizarre psychological symptoms than are teenage boys.

What the altar-bound of today end up buying from their numberless vendors is a dog's breakfast of bridal excess - part society wedding of the twenties, part Long Island Italian wedding of the fifties. It's The Philadelphia Story and The Wedding Singer served up together in one curious and costly buffet.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

Every great culture has cared a lot, one way or another, about the fate of its girls.

Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.