The Summer Book is beautiful and warm, with the kind of wisdom we can adapt to our everyday lives.

I consider myself a realist who wants to stand up for women's voices, not when they try to be the same, but when they stand up for who we are and what we see and how important it is that our voice is heard.

One of the things I like about my profession, and that I find healthy, is that one constantly has to break oneself to pieces.

Choice is the essence of what I believe it is to be human.

What I have always loved most in men is imperfection. I get moved by the wrinkles on the throat of a man. It makes me love him more. I think it is sad that more women don't take the chance that maybe men will be moved by seeing the chin a little less firm than it used to be, that a man will be more in love with his wife because he remembers who she was and sees who she is and thinks, God, isn't that lovely that this happened to her. And be moved by life telling its story there.

There is a difference between film and digital. Because digital, you know, it's perfect and whatever. But with film, you get depth. You get subject.

I think of all the choices I never knew. And those I let be made for me - to please, from fear, for love. Where did they disappear to, those choices that I never made? They are all part of who I am. They are the legacy I leave behind, they are the finished portrait of myself I cannot change.