When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me." That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.

There's not enough of me left over.

Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life.

Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.