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" I reject the notion that one should feel guilty about what you don't know. "

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" When I look at the list of my favorite works, writers who are women do tend to outnumber writers who are men for whatever reason. "

" When my husband and I first became parents, we joked that our chubby baby was destined to grow into an Alex P. Keaton Reaganite - the most unlikely, and therefore hilarious, course for the child of an interracial gay couple in gentrifying Brooklyn. "

" I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and what I like about that place is that there's not a strong regional affect in the cultural imagination like there is in Dallas or San Francisco or New York City. You have a little more freedom as a novelist this way. The suburbs become a generic idea, and the place doesn't intrude into the narrative. "

" Class is very, very fertile territory for American artists, and it has been for a long time. "

" Is deciding what you like an instinct, a sense that arrives as swiftly as my autoimmune response to cat dander? Or is it the result of reasoned consideration, the way wine tasters swish pinot noir around in their mouths, spit it out, and reach for complex metaphors about chocolate and tobacco? "

" It comforts the adult conscience to remember that, amid history's grave injustices, there were still great lives. "

" Everyone on Twitter - everyone on the Internet - seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn't allow for nuance, and it's a nice complement to confidence. "

" Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader. "

" When we had our first son, four different people gave us the same present: a copy of Ezra Jack Keats' 'The Snowy Day.' A new child often inspires duplicate gifts - we were given a dozen mostly useless baby blankets, just one more thing to spit up on - but this one was different. "

" Shot glasses make me think of youth and a mode of drinking and living that was never mine, even when I was the age for it. "

" I think that in the cultural imagination, motherhood has a primacy that fatherhood just doesn't; and that's not to say that there aren't many fathers who are active and engaged and for whom that is their life's passion. But somehow, in the imagination, there's something different about maternity. "

" The culture looms much larger than you do as a parent, and one can hardly rely on the culture to impart the lesson that womanhood is valuable. "

" Nothing is ever ideal. You have to work all the same. "

" Wishing there were more children's books like 'The Snowy Day' is a bit like wishing there were more grownup books like 'Anna Karenina.' There are only so many masterpieces out there. "

" I am not anti-Internet, and I don't think smart phones are a social ill. "

" Children are weird. I was going to say 'most children,' but I think this a rare universal law. "

" To be five years old is to be surprised by life. I'm amused by my children's awe at quotidian things - a toy helicopter, a bubble bath, the visible tentacles on a plate of calamari. And I'm envious of their ability to attain something I often can't: a state of transcendence induced by art. "

" The person most qualified to tell the tale of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the man himself, as gifted an intellect as he is an athlete. "

" I didn't know, at 22, that everything that happens to you, the good stuff as well as the less-good stuff, accrues and becomes your life. "

" There are probably some readers who don't want a great American writer to acknowledge that cleaning out the bottom drawer of the refrigerator has ever crossed their mind. "

" Kids are the ultimate trump card: a way to get out of co-op board meetings or lunch with a friend you don't want to see or your brother-in-law's set at a comedy club. It's fair to use your kids as an excuse to sidestep what you don't want to do; it's less fair to blame them for not being able to achieve what you do want to do. "

" That's part of fashion's promise: that a girlfriend or boyfriend or a promotion are just one tie or sweater or pair of shoes away. "

" History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story. "

" Every Christmas, I cook an elaborate Mexican dinner. "

" Does a bona fide chimichurri have cilantro in it? Who cares? Cooking for your family, unless your family includes Joel Rubouchon, is liberating in that regard. "

" Instead of a passion for the Yankees or fly-fishing or birding, I want to pass on to my sons a love of books, music, and art. I accept that this is partly about the gratification of my own ego, but it's also one of the only ways I know of making a rich life. That's what we all want for our progeny. "

" I think it's a not-uncommon experience for gay boys, young men, and even older men to spend a lot of time in the company of women. "

" Years ago, I worked at a fashion magazine. I was the lowest man on the totem pole, one of the only men on that particular pole: a little brother with a dozen older sisters whose grace and glamour I so admired. "

" My husband and I adopted our children through a private agency, Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. As a nonprofit organization, it relies on client fees as well as donor support to do its work. "

" Parenting is love, sure, but it's as much about receiving love as it is giving it. Parenthood is a kind of vanity. "