Forget love. Try good manners.

It's life. You don't figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.

Maybe people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.

Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a big fat mess every time.

Life is short but it is wide. This too shall pass.

I believe that illness has led me to a life of gratitude, so I consider Lyme disease at this point in my life to be a blessing in disguise.

How wide and sweet and wild motherhood and sisterhood can be.

I value humor, kindness, and the ability to tell a good story far more than money, status, or the kind of car someone drives.

I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet and something else- something spicy almost biting and exotic.

For many young women, the dream of independence and a home of their own is a tantalising goal, while a lifetime devoted solely to catering for another person's needs would be hard to countenance.

Until the L.A. market is settled, I don't think there's any other market out there that stands a chance.

All of us should banish hateful communications and practice civility for differences of opinion.

Our great country is rich and abundant in so many ways. It is totally unacceptable to me that we have children and families going hungry!

Hollywood typecast me as the secretary. I could have worked as the quirky secretary for the rest of my life, but I decided not to do that.

It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.

Making music is a wonderful way to spend your life, but do it for the love before a career. Enjoy it.

Ulysses, obviously. It was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall for it.

Because I was starting out in my 20's. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.

To be successful we must live from our imaginations, not from our memories.