Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

I think there's a karmic purpose that souls make before they decide to come into people's bodies and become someone's parent, or become someone's child. Maybe my dad disappearing was his way of giving me material with which to work, or a predisposition to feel heightened emotions.

Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.

The whole time I was on 'Grey's,' I'm still reconciling myself to my 11-year-old son, because he never saw me during that time. By the time he got up, he'd see a dent in his pillow, but by the time I got home, he was already asleep. So for three years, he had a daddy that he never saw because I had to work.

I love kids. I always have. I was an only child until I was 12, and then my sister arrived.