Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

No explanation is ever as good as not having one.

What is a Gallagher Girl? She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy... a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.

Conflicts create the fire of affects and emotions; and like every fire it has two aspects: that of burning and that of giving light.

When you are subjected to this light, depending on how strong the dose is, you will have two or three days in which you can make tremendous changes within your self, in the structure of your being.

There is something about Safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows

Sometimes you have to crouch to conquer

By March, 70 percent of women would be employed.

Don't wish for "secrets" of the masters, either. There are none worth fooling with. They had no special mediums or paints, nor special brushes that made their work great.

My job is — I make socks. That’s all I do. I don’t necessarily care about the show. I would rather film this — me doing what I do — than being around my family.