I’ve sometimes thought that it’s only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.

If you focus all of your emotional passion on your children and you neglect the relationship that brought that family into existence... eventually, things can go really, really wrong.

Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others. Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed.

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.

In a perfect world I think we would microdose with LSD instead of giving teenagers Adderall. But I'd like to see it studied first.

For a couple of months there I was shrieking like a banshee.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

Business is no more about making money than the human body is about making blood. Yes you need to make the stuff, but only to serve your higher aims.

...we can love someone without understanding that person.

With food still scarce, there was no longer a right to exist. You needed to earn your spot.

The fragrance of the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Life is a Mystery, not a problem waiting to be solved.

Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way - everything is interdependent, not absolute.

I'm not a big fan of table reads or sitting around a table and reading a script. I'd rather do it on set and do it for real.

Keep your heart right, even when it is sorely wounded.

If the media didn't know I played chess, there'd be no angle on me at all.

Before I became the 'Great Test of the West," I was the 'Beast of the East.'