Every mother I've ever met, pretty much without exception, is doing the best job she can ever do.

Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.

I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

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.

You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.

He loved me. He loved me, but he doesn't love me anymore, and it's not the end of the world.

Everyone has sorrow. Everyone has obligations. Everyone keeps going. You lean on the people who love you. You do the best you can, and you keep going.

People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world...But you have to do what's right for you.

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

Head's all empty, I don't care,' he'd sing to me, quoting the Grateful Dead, and I'd force a smile, thinking that my head was never empty and that if it ever was, you could be darn sure I'd care.

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

Nearly everything that happened had happened before. The grand lesson of history.

It's about paying attention to the little things, the details... Constantly rediscovering your partner, knowing there's a way out of any crisis.

Someone asked me what legacy I wanted to leave and all my answers were so long that I even bored him. I said I don't care. Why should I? I will die someday. So if you like, remember me.

Life is not about making dough or how many movies you can make in a year. It's about finding someone that you can share things with.

It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.

Well, it may be humorous to you, but it’s a very serious matter to the squirrels.

Of course, Im older now. Im in a different place in my life than when I wrote the songs for Car Wheels or Essence or whatever. Different things were going on.

It's a blue album, but it's not a blues album. I'm not pretending all of a sudden now I'm blues.

The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.