"It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate."

"My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale, New York, society woman, best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles."

"Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres, I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat, sleep, read, watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards."

"I'm a summer baby, so I usually have my birthday as a good summer memory."

"The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool."

"Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient."

"We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die."

"It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind."