I don't think being a lawyer is more or less valuable than being a writer.

Nothing trains you better to write fiction than being really good at writing about your own interiority.

No one ever addresses the possibility that a writer might not like her book.

I would love it if my book was considered chick-lit or a beach read. That would be great. People would buy my book.

I think that people are generally really terrible at being ambassadors of their own work.

When you write in the third person, you get to imagine other people's interiority.

Women especially are trained to protect other people's feelings, and a lot of that involves not telling the truth even about the fundamental details of your own experiences and your own life.

Unless your aim is to deceive, there's not a meaningful distinction between memoir and fiction. They're marketing categories.

No human walking the earth thinks of himself as a bullshitter.

Elisa Albert in a nutshell: funny, self-aware, and genuinely fearless that she might be a lunatic, or a genius, or both.

She wondered if it counted as being good if you did the good thing for purely selfish reasons. Probably not, but who cared. What was important was what you did, not how you felt.

Once one follows the ideals of any specific ideology, they lose some ability to see the world outside of those pre-filtered glasses.

If we are to be blessed, we must pursue the Giver of blessings.

If you look at old football pictures, the jerseys were hanging, the sleeves were dangling, but now everything is tucked and tailored.

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

I had a very diametrically opposite set of parents.

It is only the young and callow and ignorant that admire rashness. Think before you speak. Know your subject.

Who hath none to still him, may weepe out his eyes. [Who hath none to still him, may weep out his eyes.]

The heavens are nobly eloquent of the Deity, and the most magnificent heralds of their Maker's praise.

I think joy is just as instructive as pain, and I like it better. I never meant to suffer any more than I could help; my nature was meant for happiness, a daylight art and living.

Tim Cook has not been afraid to confront the government on issues he considers morally important.