“Typically, middle-class educated parents' search for their children's schools takes on the feel, if not of teen girls trying on different outfits, of adolescents trying on various selves.”

“In the end, the real wisdom of menopause may be in questioning how fun or even sane this chore wheel called modern life actually is.”

“Some of us stay married because we're in competition with our divorcing 1960s and 1970s parents, who made such a hash of it. What looks appealing to us now, in an increasingly frenetic, digital world, is the 1950s marriage.”

“Just because marriage didn't work for us doesn't mean we don't believe in the institution. Just because our own marital track records are mixed doesn't mean our hearts don't lift at the sight of our daughters' Tiffany-blue wedding invitations.”

“There's an image that some of us have of Jackie Onassis, stepping out in the rain, and Maurice Tempelsman is holding her umbrella. We want that man. We want the man to be the concierge and the masseur and the travel booker.”

“Typically, middle-class educated parents' search for their children's schools takes on the feel, if not of teen girls trying on different outfits, of adolescents trying on various selves.”

“Almost 50 years old now, some 30 years after graduation, I look at my Caltech classmates and conclude that math whizzes do not take over the world.”