Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won’t admit how horrible their children are.
Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.
Sometimes, no matter how screwed up things seem, I feel like we’re all at a wedding. But you can’t just come out and say, We’re at a wedding! Have some cake! You need to create a world into which we can enter, a world where we can see this.
Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation.
When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.
Summer nearly does me in every year. It’s too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.
She lived in fear of ifonic endings.
Sam said to me the other day, “I love you like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops,” and this is the exact same way in which I love him.
It’s better to be kind than to be right.
For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.
There is ecstasy in paying attention.
Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.
Write as if your parents are dead.
E-books are great for instant gratification – you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.
There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.
Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional. But what these people think about me is none of my business.
My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.
I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother’s Day. I didn’t want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure.
But easy’s like, who cares? Easy’s like, how much is easy going to get you?