I don't trust happiness. I turn it over as if it were a glass at a flea market or a rug at a souk, looking for chipped rims or loose threads.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer.

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive...it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.

This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. 'Going through life with your heart outside your body.

I'm so glad that social media gives me a chance to do that, to celebrate books I love and help proselytize for books I love.

You move forward because thats the way it works; thats the only place you can go.