In many respects a teenage girl's home is more important to her than at any time since she was a small child. She also needs emotional support and protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist.

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

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California.

I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.

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