“I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone and lands in Australia.”

“I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.”

“I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.”

“One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.”

“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.”

“In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.”

“Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.”

“We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.”

“Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident a tight girdle a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.”

“As Spinoza or someone very much like him once said . . .”

“Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident a tight girdle a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.”