It's funny, it never occurred to me that a movie star would play me. But now that she [Reese Witherspoon] is playing me, it's like, of course, it couldn't be anyone else! I don't know if you've seen pictures of Reese and me and Reese and my daughter Bobbi, who's named after my mother, and also plays me. There's a kind of resemblance.

I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.

Men's stories are seen as universal, women's as particular. What women are up against is the battle to not be marginalized.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.

I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside myself like a past-bloom flower in the wind. Every time I moved a muscle, another petal of me blew away. Please, I thought. Please.