“All that young-girl idealism is someone else's now.”

“. . . when my family headed out west, like any birth canal Rochester was forgotten.”

“Every woman knows what I'm talking about when I say girls grow up with a desire to please, to cede their power to other people. . . everyone knows about the sometimes aggressive and manipulative wa...”

“How was she not the quintessential woman in our culture, compulsively pleasing others in order to achieve some degree of perfection and power that's forever just around the corner, out of reach? It...”

“I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun wha...”

“When people ask me what L.A. was like in the sixties, I tell them there wasn't as much terrible stucco as there is today: no mini malls with their approximation of Spanish two-story buildings, no o...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”