I realized I didn't just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What's the point of gaining influence if you're not going to use it?

I can't even carpe 15 minutes in a row. So a whole diem is out of the question.

I've seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I've also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.

My greatest fear is that I'll fail my kids.

I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they're the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.

Often, we need to ignore the words people say and attend to their underlying, urgent, life or death questions: Am I valuable? Am I loved? The great thing is that the answer is easy: Yes! The answer is always yes. We don't have to think too hard.

Young people: marry simply, start your life, and party later. Think of how much babysitting for your future colicky baby you could buy with that wedding budget. Think of how much marriage therapy you could buy. Invest in your marriage, not your wedding.

Questions are like gifts - it's the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.

We're told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There's an inherent contradiction.

Book tours are super hard for me as a raging introvert. I love humanity, but actual humans are hard for me. So something like a book tour - where I'm constantly on the road - scares the hell out of me.