The complicated thing about friends is that sometimes they are totally wrong about us and sometimes they are totally right and it's almost always only in retrospect that we know which is which.

If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking.

I think a lot of people have the idea of an editor being someone who comes in like a dictator, and says, "You can't have that scene." And it never is like that - or perhaps some editors are like that and they're assholes, and they're not good editors. A good editor actually says, "I respect you" and they understand that you have a vision and they're actually trying to help you realize it.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.