I feed my kids organic food and milk, but I've also been known to buy the odd Lunchable. My kids are not allowed to watch TV during the week, but on weekends even the 2-year-old veges out to 'The Simpsons.'
Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.
I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.
If only shame were a reliable engine for behavior modification. All it does is make me feel bad, which inspires me to bust open a bag of cheese popcorn, which then makes me feel crappy about my weight.
I love the novel of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful novel. I love the movie of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful movie. And they're totally different. You accept each on its own terms, and that's kind of the ideal.
I have made so many mistakes as a mother. But the one thing that I know I do is I make sure my children know how much I love them and they are absolutely secure in that.
I am an adamant feminist. It never occurred to me to take my husband's name when we married. I am a supporter of abortion rights, of equal pay for equal work, of the rights of women prisoners, of all the time-honored feminist causes, and then some.
As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.
Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift.
By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.
If producing a regular column is living out loud, then keeping a daily blog is living at the top of your lungs. For a couple of months there, I was shrieking like a banshee.
So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.
The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That's kind of fun, actually.
The capacity for extravagant emotion that my husband finds so attractive in me can be exhausting, especially to a child. My moods are mercurial, and this can be terrifying. I know, because I was a daughter of a mother with a changeable temperament.
Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I'm not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.
