You have to respect people's suffering. To deny that the world is unfair and painful for most of the people living in it would be false and judgmental.

To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat cat politicians and secret conspiracies don't control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that.

I resisted parenthood for a long, long time. But having a daughter has given me a sense of hopefulness that I didn't have before.

I was brought up Catholic and, of course, I strayed and repudiated it. That's a painful thing to go through, because you have to look back and realize that you wasted a gigantic chunk of your life.

I had a bumper sticker on my car for a long time that said, "Kill your television." People helpfully pointed out that I was a total fraud because I was a television writer.

I don't know what the universe is all about, but to me, nothing is gained by slapping a God sticker on it. It has never been a comfort to me to believe there's an all-seeing eye in the sky.

I'm not religious. I do have a baby - a four-month old girl - and that's a religion in itself.