Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It’s much better if one simply does.

I don’t really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it’s very upsetting. But it’s inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one’s life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.

I think our material is our lives. That’s part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn’t always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn’t write, I’m sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It’s symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

I would prefer you not to say, “That was the most terribly written piece I’ve ever read.” That would hurt me. But you don’t think I’m the best person in the world? Well, alright.

Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there’s hope for the next generation.

Friendship needs both confidences and confidence in the other’s outstretched hand.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There’s not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.