My father expected his first child to be a boy, and when it didn't turn out that way he didn't let the fact get in the way of a good story.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around, and nearly every book represents what my son's third grade teacher refers to as a "teachable moment.

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth of understanding you acquire over time with the help of the people who love you that that's when you can really get down to what you really think and believe.

It is so easy to waste our lives: Our days, our hours, our minutes ... it is so easy to exist instead of live.

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.