Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving; they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.

Isn't it our job to be appalled by our parents? Isn't it every generation's duty to be dismayed by the previous generation? And to assert that we are different - only to discover later that we are distressingly the same?

I was surprised by my daughter's generation and how they were rebelling against the '70s idea that sex was perfect and it should be sought.

The older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family.

Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.