Quotes from Jennifer Weiner

Diana buried her face in her hands, because, as Michael undoubtedly suspected, the answer was all the time. It was her biggest fear—that her rapist hadn't stopped with her, that, to the contrary, she'd been the first, in a line, maybe a long one.

you can't control what they do, but you can control how you respond to it … whether you allow it to drive you crazy, or occupy all of your thoughts, or whether you note what they're doing, consider it, and make a conscious decision as to how much you'll let it affect you.

long as people can still surprise you, it means you're not dead.

Diana, meanwhile, reads every novel she can find that's set on the Cape, and describes for her father the pristine, golden beaches, sand dunes with cranberry bogs and poets' shacks hidden in their declivities. She conjures the taste of briny oysters and butter-drenched lobsters, fried clams eaten with salt water-pruned fingers, ice-cream cones devoured after a day in the sun.

intentional whole.

No one wanted to see anything that raw. The trick of the Internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real… which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all.

When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there.. whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time.

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're angry, everything looks like a target. There are a lot of angry people in the world. And these days, they're all online

a white headband in her curled and sprayed hair.

They were brightly colored, their gold rims vivid. From a distance, they looked like flowers, pinks and creams, reds and golds, unfolding in the sun.

But if, in the end, she never lived the glittering, rich-lady life of her youthful imaginings, she'd have a life that made her happy.

This is motherhood for you," said my own mother. "Going through life with your heart outside your body.

When you have excluded the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth

mom about the fight, and he'd be grounded or worse. Maybe his mom wouldn't even give him his Christmas

I knew that it was no fault of ours. We weren't to blame, I thought to myself. I could let it go; I could set the burden down, I could be free. Except, of course, that knowing something in your head is different than feeling it in your heart.

On the best days, there'd be a new package of margarine, and Bethie would be allowed to break the capsule of yellow dye and squish it all around until all the margarine was yellow-colored.

the hours can feel long, but the years go by fast.

She pulled out her phone to take pictures, then picked up the bottle of wine, and looked a question at Daisy. We only needed one cup for the rice, right? Examining the bottle, she asked, Is this wine just for cooking, or is it okay to drink? Oh, that's actually important, said Daisy. Don't ever buy cooking wine at the supermarket. Never, ever cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.

Savasana—corpse pose—is the hardest pose of all. You would think, 'What could be hard about lying on the floor?' But the truth is that we, as humans, are not wired to be still and do nothing.

Women had made progress—Jo only had to look as far as the television set to see it—but she wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do all of it flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?

You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you're lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again. You try, and fail, and try again, and fail again.

You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you're lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again.

And what do you do all day?" her sister asked. Jo made herself smile. "I cook. I clean. I read. I write." "So you're basically Betty Crocker," Bethie said. "Betty Crocker with a library card.

For women who do too much—which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books—this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose your adventure for you.