I think being a woman alone enhanced the impulse in others to be generous. What we're told is that to be a woman alone is to be in a dangerous situation. The message is that people are gong to prey on you and do bad things to you. That may be true in some cases, but what I experienced was the other case.

When going on a date with someone they met online, the number-one fear that straight women have is going on a date with a serial killer. The number-one fear straight men have is going on a date with a fat woman. That says everything.

He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy tale.

There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.

I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her. My whole life sort of ended when my mom died. I had to remake it again and be a new person in the world without my mom. It was a very primal rebirth, that time after my mom died.

The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.

All of us, as we mature and grow up - if we're doing life right - we evolve.