Whatever my intentions, whatever the truth of my claim, I had no business giving a lecture to a total stranger.

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.

The promises of prayer are extraordinary, but for prayer to work as God promises it to work, it must be purged of self and doubt.

Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much

I walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

In the final analysis, each of us is responsible for what we are. We cannot blame it on our mothers, who, thanks to Freud, have replaced money as the root of all evil.

Anything I do, I do with my heart. This is why I sometimes get very upset or sometimes get very personal when I'm working.

Antonin Scalia knows that freedom of speech has consequences. And the consequences of freedom of speech are speech you don't like, that you don't want to hear, that you don't want to listen to.

We live in a society where we never prepare people to be a community.

What was once obvious to them was no longer quite as obvious. Why was it that humans lost sight of truth so quickly?