Dani said this woman, with whom she’d lived for two years, had never known her. “I feel like people accept the first thing I show them,” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.

Most women at retirement have significantly less money than men, and they still get paid less than men. I'm sure that in my reptile brain I'm quite conscious of this.

Even happy situations can easily start to feel miserable. So, I think that people who consider themselves sophisticated or who are in fact sophisticated have come to distrust stories that are uplifting or simply stories in which the characters get what they want in the end. Because in life, what you want is never the end.

I think people try to make the most of their time on earth and also to fix their time on earth. They try to fix external verities, things that are true for all time, ideas that are true for all time: Rome will last forever! America will last forever! Beauty, as defined by the fashion industry, is one of those things—this is beautiful. This will always be beautiful—and hold it in a way that has some sense of permanence about it, and absoluteness. And yet it’s not.

I think people hold back all kinds of things. And in a way, they just want to be nice. They want to be civil.

I think women who are very creative and giving members of society can be respected and accepted.

I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.