Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties.

Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying.

I don't think any day is worth living without thinking about what you're going to eat next at all times.

I am not a new journalist, whatever that is. I just sit here at the typewriter and bang away at the old forms.

If your husband is cheating on you with a carhop, get Meryl Streep to play you. You'll feel much better.

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

You can never have too much butter - that is my belief. If I have a religion, that's it.