A kid thinks her mother is just that -- hers. A mother is also a woman, an independent being, who doesn't want to be reminded by anyone, child or otherwise, of her tree-trunk thighs. The world made women's private lives a public affair to people who knew them and even people who didn't.

I love the smell of a mans skin.

She thought about him all the time - not so much about Doug the individual, but rather about the nature of love, and the shock of learning how quickly it could disappear.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while Im walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.

In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become.

This was how the modern working girl behaved. She didn’t hide her femininity or apologize for it, as they did in the old days. She flaunted it and, having been given more than any woman before her, demanded even more than that.