Food is so important - it sustains us, it provides a social focal point, and it is fun. I cannot unravel the difference between love in my family and the preparation of food because they are so closely woven.
Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don't feed the source, it dissipates entirely.Same is true of liking a boy. If you cut off the thoughts, if you stop pinning, you're free to find a boy who is attainable.
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.
You never know when some small thing will lead to a big idea. Travel is very inspirational - but it's in the ordinary that I find my themes of love and work and family.
Let life unfold, say what you mean. You can’t always think about what you’ve lost, or what you don’t have, or what you didn’t get. Because when you do that, you’re missing out on the now. You can’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow or a year from now.
Mama always said a good family has one heartbeat. No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.
Maybe a first love exists to reaffirm the best parts of yourself, the choices you made when you didn't worry about the consequences. Maybe a first love exists to remind you to be brave in the moment, to stand up for your feelings, instead of shrinking back in the face of potential loneliness.
The wedding vows are a license to be a complete jerk, with full knowledge that the person you married has agreed, no matter how large a horse's ass you are, to stay by your side until death. A fool could tell you this is a bad deal.
The most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.
And when you clear away the cobwebs of the description of every job in the world, at the bottom of that job is service. It's service. And I took that ethic and applied it to my writing craft.
People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count of the Bookmobile.
I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I'm always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses, how dialogue sounds, what feels authentic and sounds real, what's funny, how to build distinctive and original characters - all the aspects of playwriting, scene-building, the architecture of dramatizing.
All the things I thought I was - simple and plain and sometime funny - are very small words. They do not begin to describe me. They do not begin to express what is inside of me. I have value, and I have worth. I cannot be replaced like old shoes or taken for granted like tap water.