Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.

The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.

It makes me angry to think that . . . female sanitation workers will spend their days doing a job most of their co-workers think they can't handle, and then they will go home and do another job most of their co-workers don't want.

The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and tortuous.

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write, and there are very few of them.

Some of the most important lessons I've learned have been from stumbling, and I am deeply grateful that my parents allowed me to fight my own battles.