I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head. In recent years, however, birthdays have been more like medical checkups—no fun at all but necessary if one intends to stay alive from year to year.

I feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples. Because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.

When men are oppressed it's a tragedy, when women are oppressed it's a tradition.

Boys don't make passes at female smart-asses.

Control is a big issue when you’re sick. It’s the first thing you lose – other losses come later.

Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let ‘born again’ patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.

Children’s liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

When a family is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed, a place where we learn to feel distinct without being better, – and sacrifice for others without losing ourselves.

Friends can be said to “fall in like” with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.

I want to visit Memory Lane, I don’t want to live there.