“A middle-aged mother in a little town called Naples has been named Miss Dreamsville.”

“And in general, the residents of the town wondered why they all felt hollow just beneath the throat, the result of missing something they had never been able to name in the first place.”

“Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.”

“No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.”

“It was terrifying, liberating, and risky. But one day I woke up and decided to try it." (On writing her first novel, "Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society")”

“Our epoch has been give many nicknames--the Age of Anxiety, the Atomic Age, the Space Age. It might, with equally good reason, be called the Age of Television Addiction, the Age of Soap Opera, the Age of the Disk Jockey.”