If I could give my teenaged self any advice, it would be 'Calm down!'

Anyone who knows me knows that I am really into hair. I'm a real girly girl and love doing my hair and experimenting with different styles.

Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.

My biggest complaint with tights is that they do not accommodate skinny-ankled people like myself.

I like to play the ukulele, but I'm not, like, awesome at it. I mostly play the piano and the guitar.

Nothing's better than a picnic.

Always the aim for me is making people feel like they are not alone. That's just the greatest feeling.

A lot of people work out to be skinny. That's so boring, and it seems like a depressing goal for a modern woman.

I remember having this friend in school who said she didn't like the Beach Boys. And in that moment I knew we couldn't be friends anymore.

It's never too late for a coffee. After all it's morning somewhere in the world.

After staring at origami directions long enough, you sort of become one with them and start understanding them from the inside.

We have shed many tears to toughen the soul.

She is a great gobbler of books, but reads only trash, memorizing nothing and leaving out the longer descriptions.

Always leave something to wish for otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.

Never be too proud to get down on your knees and pray.

In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

I'm certainly not interested in religion for religion's sake or for some kind of structure or stabilizing force. Religion is supposed to be for God's sake and God is an unpredictable, wild thing.

Without that poise and balance and gentle humor and caring sense, nothing happens at all. It's just egotism and vanity and jealousy and possessiveness.

[Reading Swing Time] made me a feel a little bit like when I used to read David [Foster] Wallace. Like, "I can't play that game. I wish I could, but I can't do it."

The caterpillars of the commonwealth, Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.