If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?

When I was five I learned to read. Books were a miracle to me - white pages, black ink, and new worlds and different friends in each one. To this day, I relish the feeling of cracking a binding for the first time, the anticipation of where I'll go and whom I'll meet inside.

Right now women are using surrogates because they can't be pregnant. What worries me is the possibility that soon they'll use surrogates because they don't want to be pregnant.

I get really starstruck and tongue tied when I'm around other writers and the conversation tends not to go well.

She thought of what it would be like to grow up without the one certainty that every baby deseved - when I'm hurt or cold or scared, someone will come and care for me - and how that absence could warp you so that you'd lash out at the people you loved, driving them away when all you wanted to do was pull them closer.

Every mother I've ever met, pretty much without exception, is doing the best job she can ever do.

I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?