She supposed this was the real definition of a mother – a woman who willingly allows her heart to break over and over again for her children.

Time limits tend to turn everything predictable and mundane into a novelty.

The benefit of carrying the entire world on your shoulders was that you didn’t have to stare it in the face.

Traveling, she realized, was like a slow dismemberment of the body. It plucked the heart out of her and split it into pieces, leaving a bit behind wherever she went, never to be whole again.

Are guilt and regret not messages from inside of us, letting us know that our moral compasses have been recalibrated and are pointing in the right direction?

Such was the cyclical nature of Galway life: finding tragedy in the simple things and simplicity in the tragic things.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

Then find out what your sword is - find your own advantage - and wear it proudly.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

I think a smile can make your whole body. Models, they look fabulous, but they don't smile, and they look so mad.

Doubt is only removed by action. If you're not working then that's where doubt comes in.

When you have a Jewish mother who has a very strong Jewish family, it's very ethnic in its practices. Eating brisket, the food and the family and the interconnectedness for better or worse.

Your shoes are only as good as the laces they're attached to.

Usually I read biographies of interesting people. I am not attracted to novels - make-believe, or recreations of what people think life should be.

What to us may seem like a tragedy when it happens eventually can form itself into a gift.

America is a great country, but you can't live in it for nothing.