Quotes from Ayelet Waldman

40 percent of arrests for drug possession in this country are for a drug that 19.8 million of us have used in the past month.

If the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on. —Terence McKenna

But concealment leads to shame, and of all hurts shame is the most painful. Only if you name a problem, confront it head-on, drag it into the light, does it become surmountable. I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.

There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.

Francis Crick, co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, reportedly experimented with LSD while working on the problem. Though he never confirmed the rumors, friends insist that he told them he actually conceived of the double-helix shape during an LSD trip.*2

If, for example, you take the drug in a psychotherapeutic set and setting, you will focus on personal issues and may gain insights relevant to your emotional life. If you take the drug anticipating a spiritual experience and in a spiritually encouraging environment, you may have a transcendent mystical experience that causes you to re-evaluate your place in the universe. If, however, you focus on a specific intellectual problem, it is there that your insights will reside.

The more furious he became at the perverse machinery of the military, the more his belt buckle gleamed, as if to prove that it wasn't he who was unfit for the service but the service that was unfit for him. When

Each morning, I find myself astonished anew at how my husband wakes up convinced that his day will contain a series of delights and pleasures

A Good Father is characterized quite simply by his presence. He shows up. In the delivery room, at dinnertime (when he can), to school recitals and ball games (whenever it's reasonably possible). He's a good provider who is not above changing a diaper or wearing a Baby Björn.

The single defining characteristic of iconic Good Motherhood is self-abnegation. Her children's needs come first; their health and happiness are her primary concern. They occupy all her thoughts, her day is constructed around them, and anything and everything she does is for their sakes.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.

My new novel 'Red Hook Road' began many years ago as a short article in the newspaper.

Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'

I certainly don't think it's inevitable that we don't love children who don't carry our own DNA. If that were true we wouldn't have millions of successful adoptions to consider. I do think that it's harder to love a child when you come into that child's life after the unrequited passion of infancy and early childhood has passed.

I wish I could view the belly that oozes over the top of my pants as a badge of maternal honor. I do try. I make sure that the women whose looks I admire all have sufficient fat reserves to survive a famine, and I make a lot of snide comments about the skeletal likes of Lara Flynn Boyle and Paris Hilton.

When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's so beautiful.' I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him.

What I do with my kids is - and I think they probably do ignore us - is No Alcohol. If they're drunk they will be grounded for time immemorial.

I was a federal public defender during the most important years of the drug war. I saw people go to jail for nothing, and go to jail for a long time.

Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?

Love & Marriage are about work & Compromise. They're about seeing someone for what he is, being disappointed and deciding to stick around anyway. They're about commitment and comfort, not some kind of sudden, hysterical recognition.

There are many times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.

I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.