Gail Sheehy

In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.

Over the next few years the boardrooms of America are going to light up with hot flashes.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.

This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.

I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.

When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I've had a couple of panic attacks in my life.

It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!

Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.

Career-driven millennials are strategic about working obsessively while they are single and earning enough money to afford advanced education. Most are patient enough to wait until 30 or later to develop their dream.

I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.

We see it in the body, that if you just give the body enough rest and comfort, it has remarkable self-healing capacities. Well, so does the spirit.

I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.

I do think women can have it all - but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.

Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.

Family caregiving has become a predictable crisis. Americans are living longer and longer but dying slower and slower.

People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.