As the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and fall slid into winter, I realized one of the great truths about tragedy: You can dream of disappearing. You can wish for oblivion, for endless sleep or the escape of fiction, of walking into a river with your pockets full of stones, of letting the dark water close over your head. But if you've got kids, the web of the world holds you close and wraps you tight and keeps you from falling no matter how badly you think you want to fall.

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.

I don't think any writer chooses what his or her work is called.

As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did.

I think there are a lot of books about thin, attractive people having thin, attractive people's problems. I'm better set up to tell a different story.

The idea you can tell a writer of a specific religion to stop writing about that religion is presumptuous.

When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there... whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time.