Quotes from Allison Pearson

A barrel of a man, who would have been bald, were it not for the last wisps of hair carefully shaped into a spun-sugar next, like a Michelin-starred dessert, over the sweaty pink dome of his scalp.

Can you be a success as a mother? People only notice when you're not doing it right.

Truth is, I didn't really tell him anything much anymore. Richard had gone off into the forest o his own journey to self-discovery, as people do at our age, but he forgot to drop a trail of crumbs for me to follow him. I had no clue where he was and I'd stopped trying to find out, mainly because he didn't seem to notice or care at I wasn't looking anymore. Too much of the time, I felt like a single parent.

My great-great-grandchildren will be born with prehensile texting thumbs, no vocal cords and zero capacity to read human facial expressions.

Hadn't I been humiliated when I was looking longingly at Roger Federer's twin on the Tube and he offered me his seat? Our bodies continue to make fools of us as we age. Lust doesn't die to spare the sensitivities of the grossed-out young who prefer not to think of wrinkly couplings, and - this is really cruel - carnal feelings are among the very last to checkout.

That's the downside of bringing one clan into contact with another: by the time that everyone has been introduced, it's practically time to go home.

So that's Richard, says Sally. So that's Mike, I say. Sally puts an arm around me and squeezes, then leans in close. Thank God for us, that's what I say. Thank God. And I mean it.

Hit it back over the net, as the teachers use to say when getting us ready for school debates. The harder the shot coming toward you, the more power in your return.

It's a sad fact but women, women like me, that is, we're starting to get the diseases of men; the coronaries, the strokes, the stomach cancer. But men aren't getting the diseases of women, We turned ourselves into men to succeed in a world designed by them for them, but they never learned to be us, and maybe they never will.

Becoming a parent was like trying to build a boat while you were at sea.

Mine was the Benjamin Button of careers; age and status had both gone backward. It definitely took some getting used to.

Men without wives might as well be men without mothers; they are more orphans than widowers. Men without wives, they lose their spines, their ability to walk tall in the world, even to wipe the shaving foam from their ears. Men need women more than women need men; isn't that the untold secret of the world?

There is a lot to be said for living an unobserved life.

Somewhere, a heavy, glass door sighs in its airlock and a woman approaching fifty sprints to get her fingers in the gap before it closes.

I am a passionate devotee of the Howard Hawks' screwball comedies of the 1930s and the 1940s, where I think that the relations between men and women were at their civilized height in terms of banter and exchange of wit and equality.

I forget the derivation of Boxing Day, but the feeling of wanting to invite your loved ones outside one at a time and punch them in the face, does that come into it somewhere?

I speak as the journalist who, on the first day back at work for 'The Daily Telegraph' after the birth of my daughter, went to interview Tom Hanks with an epaulette of banana sick on my jacket.

My child was one of Nature's Tories pitted against a mother who was one of nurture's Lefties: it was no contest.

Sometimes it's a relief just to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

We carry our younger selves with us our whole lives, and we can measure out of lives by music we've loved or icons we've loved.

I've struggled with depression, and the signs that I was falling apart - having heart palpitations at 4 A.M. - were there for a long time before I paid attention. Even when my psychiatrist gave me a questionnaire, I found myself trying to circle the answers that made me seem like I wasn't a wreck. I've since learned to listen to my body.

My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn't want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it.

My husband is old-fashioned and kind, he does the greatest Sinatra impression, and I'd never have written anything if he hadn't read all those bedtime stories and unloaded the dishwasher while I slaved over chapters.

The great thing about unrequited love is it's the only kind that lasts.