Being a mother is complicated because its not just a paternal culture making demands on you; its those internal demands and expectations that women have and are self-generated.

I myself have perceived women's actions as more aggressive than I would have in men because I too am walking around with my own biases. The way to fight them is to become conscious of them.

Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]

I've often thought that one of us is what we imagine, that each of us normalizes the terrible strangeness of inner life with a variety of convenient fictions.

Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

Depression is when you think there's nothing to be done. Fortunately I always think there's something to be done.