Generally speaking, that's good drama - the marriage plot or the tragedy - but the reality of women's lives is that most of us don't get what we wanted, and most of us find ways to have really interesting lives anyway.

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

I'm trying to dismantle a stereotype that in order to live any kind of creative life, you have to be in torment and suffering. We're addicted to this idea because it makes for good bio pics... but I actually think it's better to live a life where you're constantly exploring your curiosity and creativity.

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.

Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.

Embrace the beautiful mess that you are.

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