“God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.”

“Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything.”

“There, stacked high on his desk, was a tower of paper. Thick slabs of manuscript. Slush. Unsolicited, unagented, unloved. This was where dreams came to die. Book proposals, cover letters, entire manuscripts – they gathered like so much detritus on the desks of publishers everywhere.”

“In a flashback, we hear Holly's mother summing up her life in a conversation with her husband, Wylie: "My life is one big mistake," she said. "No, it's not," he said. "It's a series of small mistakes.”

“NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.”

“Does it ever occur to women that maybe a guy might like to have a plan, you know, because he's nervous? He's not sure that he could just walk up to you and you'd respond if he said "I like you." "I like you." "I like you!”

“Fear is not real. It is a product of thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.”