My mother died when I was a teenager and, although I have grown step-sons, I have never raised a child of my own.

My mother, who was sick for years and died and when I was 16, hungered for a broader view of the world. She sought a vision of...

It's not a dating jungle out there, Mrs. Susan Patton. It's a university.

Has Princeton lost its New Jersey mind? Is Snooki going to write the next letter addressing the deepest needs and ambitions of the women in Princeton classes 2012 through 2016? Or will it be JWoww?...

Everybody believes her own friendships are endowed with a kind of secret significance. When we're with our friends, we believe that we are in extraordinary company. Making us feel rare and prized, our friends capture our imagination and offer us perspective. Appearing almost ghostlike as figures from our past or...

From age 16 to age 20, a woman's body is a temple. From 21 to 49, it's an amusement park. From 50 on, it's a terrarium.

I know this because every morning, I now take a capsule with 4.6 billion strains of supposedly beneficial flora to help establish the equilibrium...

Yes, the days are still short, but there's more light than there used to be; the promise of spring keeps us hopeful during these brusque and dismissive days of late winter. In a similar way, while there are more terrible books being published than ever, some writers continue to offer...

All good boyfriends are the same.

All bad boyfriends are bad in their own way.

That's why we need to understand them, even in retrospect.

To understand the bad boyfriend is to give him, paradoxically, less power.

The bad boyfriend usually assumes a prominent position in our lives precisely...

The world lies to us.

Men don't believe the lies. They know it's a load of advertising, a bunch of hype, a song-and-dance number for the easily charmed.

But women believe. We're like those weirdly inarticulate but enthusiastic UFO sighters who live in unpopulated desert towns: We know it's out...

I was watching an episode of Hoarders during which a woman named "Jahn" whined, wept, and coerced everybody around her for almost the entire show. She terrified me to the point where I had to turn off the sound. It is precisely the way I react when scary...

A student from another institution telephoned me and wanted to talk about political correctness. I asked if he'd be willing to write down his questions and told him I'd be using my own answers in print; he said that was fine. Our exchange, unedited, appears below:

Our class was assigned...

A student once asked me if I ever wanted "to get married, stay home and take it easy instead of go to work."

I laughed for five minutes.

She was laughing with me -- despite having absolutely no idea what was funny about her question -- until I explained,...

Imagine you are a squid. You hear rumors of an imminent attack by a loosely constructed cell of predatory sperm whales. You're scared. What's the best thing to do? You excrete a whole lot of ink, thereby blinding your foe. Of course, you can't see too well yourself, but that...

Welcome to December!

Get out the tissue paper and the bows. While you're at it, get out the tissues and the waterproof mascara. It's the holiday season.... Just face the fact that somebody in your family will make you cry before the month is out.

I don't care whether...

Twilight University said they needed new blood, so our heroine took the job.

When I emerged from my 1953 Chevrolet pickup truck, my mass of long tangled hair was windblown. I was disheveled, like some kind of unearthly creature. Or maybe like Carole King. I ran my delicately thin fingers...

I'm interested in the larger issues raised when a young woman attaches herself romantically to an older man in a position of power.

True, Paula Broadwell -- who is almost 40 -- isn't so young that she flies half-fare or orders Happy Meals on a regular basis....

I've never regarded myself as an idea hoarder. You know what I mean -- one of those people who say: "I don't want to reveal too much about my work, because I'm worried about people taking the premise/title/idea for themselves."

To act territorial and possessive was pathetically unattractive and...

Today, I'm interviewing Carole DeSanti (vice president, editor-at-large at Viking Penguin and a longtime champion of strong and original voices in fiction) about women and writing and publishing as part of my new HuffPost Publishing series.

I've known Carole since we started out in our...

If you're a writer, you can meet your heroes. If you're a woman, you can sometime meet your fairy godmothers.

Novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright Fay Weldon, whose 80th birthday is being celebrated on September 22nd, is every woman writer's fairy godmother: she's an inspiration, a formidable figure in...

Anthony Lane, on whom I have had a secret literary crush for years, has just written about The Portrait of a Lady. I love the wit and deft turns of phrase in Lane's film reviews -- he writes the way Astaire dances -- but although Lane is his...

Today I'm talking with "Eve Harrington," an alias for my favorite conversational accomplice when it comes to the Royals, American politics, and popular culture. You can't know all about Eve, or even very much about her, because of workplace complications. That, of course, makes her perspective even more delicious.

I...

Will Romney and Ryan decide what Americans can do with our reproductive systems?

"We will honor you, our fellow citizens, by giving you the right and opportunity to make the choice."

That is exactly what Republican candidate for vice president Paul Ryan said in his speech Saturday morning:...