Much of the magic of language, of course, lies in its fluidity.

A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell.

I was just 13 when 'The Big Chill' was released in late September 1983, so I didn't catch all of its nuances when I sneaked into the theater to see it. But I could tell one thing for sure: These people were grown-ups.

I've been a freelancer my entire career, and, at any given time, I have several deadlines for all sorts of things, whether it's some magazine piece or ad copywriting or anything.

To be honored by success is to take your life seriously. To humble-talk about it is to take yourself seriously.

Becoming a parent is always going to be a default setting. I truly believe there will always be more people who want to have children than who don't.

As humans with egos and feelings, none of us wants to be pilloried. But as thinkers and writers, it's our job to express opinions forthrightly and without qualifying them out of existence.

I always lamented that I wasn't a writer during the late '60s and the early '70s, with the New Journalism and Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson and all those people.

You don't realize how much a dog's presence defines the contours of your home until, in its absence, the walls seem to relocate themselves.

Opinion is dominating, which is absolutely ridiculous - there wouldn't be anything for people to have opinions about if there weren't people out there gathering facts on the ground.

There's a particular kind of single woman whose relationship with her dog has a level of intensity and affection that may be both the cause and the result of her singleness. For a long time, I was that woman.

I always tell writers that it's good to have an area of expertise. It's a really practical answer, I know, but know about science or about sports or about medicine, so you can work as a science writer or a sports writer. Don't just know about yourself.

As with 'feminism,' not to mention 'liberalism' and 'conservatism,' 'political correctness' tends to mean what you want it to mean, which also pretty much amounts to utter meaninglessness.

I don't keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I'll send emails to friends, and that's a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I've never been a journal keeper.

A typical day in my writing life starts with looking at pictures of real estate online for at least 20 minutes. If I happen to be actually in the market for a house, I do this for 40 minutes. Then I walk my dog, come back home, and tell myself I can look at real estate for another five minutes.

Just as I never liked bumper stickers - even though I do brake for animals, and if I had a kid, she would definitely be an honor student - I don't like the idea of expressing my views through social-media-controlled rainbow-or-anything-else-ification.

In about an 18-month period, my mother got sick and died, and then I had a freak illness less than a year later and almost died myself. And I found in both of those situations that there was this expectation to have a kind of transformative experience.

My goal is to invite readers to think along with me and draw their own conclusions.

It is important for children to grow up in a world where there are all kinds of adults and role models around them, for them to know it's not just parents and people who are parents that care about them, but that there are people who are living other kinds of lives.

I loved Woody Allen's short pieces. I was equally influenced by Woody Allen and Norman Mailer. I was very into this idea of being high-low, of being serious and intellectual but also making really broad jokes.

If you do the things you enjoy and are good at, I really have a feeling that that will lead to having a fulfilling life, and people with fulfilling lives are able to be 'good people.'

Air travelers, of course, are famous for their hubris. They carry on too many bags and use the restroom when the seat-belt sign is on.

The point of essays is the point of writing anything. It's not to tell people what they already think or to give them more of what they already believe; it's to challenge people, and it's to suggest alternate ways of thinking about things.

This whole notion that it's somehow easy and simpler to live in the country is such a fallacy.