library is a beautiful old thing

I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You must fight for it, strive for it, and insist upon it.

If I'd had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.

[Italian men] are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.