When it comes to women, get your life together first. Put on your own oxygen mask first. Figure out who you are. Mature. And then go find somebody to share that life with.

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.

In order for marriage to endure it has to change along with us, and it does that very graciously. And in the end I find there is something kind of moving about it: the fact that people continue to insist on choosing somebody to build a life with.

I see a lot of women who can't travel when they're young, and then their kids grow up and they become amazing adventurers. Travel is not only for the young. Sometimes it's wasted on the young.

The world needs women who stop asking for permission from the principal. Permission to live their lives as they deeply know they often should. I think we still look to authority figures for validation, recognition, permission.

I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.

I'm not a big Austen reader. I wouldn't say I dislike her, but if I had to choose between her and Eliot to bring to a desert island, it would definitely be Eliot.