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" I'm not black myself, but my sons are. "

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" Every sense has the power to transport us through time, but it's taste I find the most mysterious, and writing about it often results in tortured metaphors. "

" 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. "

" Before the arrival of my first son, I gave up on the moribund business of magazine publishing, where I had long dreamed of a career, and went to work in advertising. That I could be paid great money to write was incredibly hard to believe. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Parenting advice is mostly useless because every family is uniquely its own; artistic advice is mostly useless because every artist works in their own way. Thus, figuring out how to balance the two has an intense specificity. "

" Fiction is just lying. "

" I'm a square. I always wanted the standard-issue American dream: beautiful home, loving husband, couple of kids. I met another square, and we got married; a year later, we had a baby; three years later, had another. "

" Family is whatever you say it is. "

" Baking is a matter of precision and timing, but I just make things up as I go. "

" I didn't know, at 22, that regret is useless. If I could go back and change something - give myself some big break, pass along some secret information, reassure myself that most things would, in fact, work out - I don't think I would. "

" I don't want the staggeringly wealthy Elton John and his family to represent the standard of gay fatherhood any more than straight people want the stunningly beautiful Angelina Jolie and her family to represent the standard of heterosexual parenthood. Stars are outliers; stars are exceptions. "

" You can't control what's going to happen to the book you're about to publish. "

" I have a theory that because my kitchen is small, you can't preheat an oven and deal with dough at the same time, although maybe it's just that I'm a bad baker. "

" For a long time, I thought that I was an enlightened parent by virtue of being an enlightened person. What a fool. "

" Writer's block is a fiction. "

" Fashion has underscored the interchangeability of men for a long time, maybe from the outset. "

" Shopping for clothes is time consuming, it's tiring, and it can feel like a waste of an autumn afternoon. "

" If writing really is empathy, then understanding your place in society might actually help you achieve it. "

" Children's picture books are a unique record of social evolution: in gender roles and racial politics, as is much discussed, but also in fashion and interior design. "

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

" Because the designers at Baby Gap and Crew Cuts have determined it would be cute if kids dressed like their dads, seemingly every American male between 2 and 52 dresses identically. "

" There is a tendency to presume autobiography in fiction by women or minorities. Guys named Jonathan write universal stories, while there's this sense that everyone else is just fictionalizing their own small experiences. "

" Some writers are prolific; some are shape-shifters. It's rare and intimidating to encounter one who is both. "

" Fashion is about fantasy. "

" 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. "

" This tension between ambition and parenthood, that's not a reckoning that many men face. There are plenty of men who say, 'Oh, I need to be there for my kids, and I can't do x or y professionally,' but for the most part, that's a struggle that belongs to women in society. "

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

" 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. "