Well, you can’t control what they do, but you can control how you respond to it…whether you allow it to drive you crazy, or occupy all of your thoughts, or whether you note what they’re doing, consider it, and make a conscious decision as to how much you’ll let it affect you

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed.

There are two kinds of houses in the neighborhood where I grew up-the ones where the parents stayed married, and the ones where they didn’t.

I'm not cut out to be a famous person; I can't do my hair and makeup well enough.

But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.

Do I want to spend my diminished working hours writing or answering email? Now I have somebody read through them. If someone has something really important to tell me I write back. Otherwise they get the auto reply.