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

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life.

I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish. But it was not an infatuation, and here’s how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus. During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was.

Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy.