Gail Sheehy

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.

If you're the person living closest to the parent who's going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, 'You don't know what you're doing.' Because they're not on the spot, and they probably feel guilty.

Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting.

My husband, Clay Felker, died 17 years after his first cancer due to secondary conditions that developed from treatment.

The feminist spirit still lives! It shows most boldly among younger women from the millennial generation.

You don't have to feel confident to act confident. In fact, it's the most important acting job you can learn.

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

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

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

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 dare to do things - that's how I survive.

In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.

The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.

Stress overload makes us stupid. Solid research proves it. When we get overstressed, it creates a nasty chemical soup in our brains that makes it hard to pull out of the anxious depressive spiral.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.

It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter.

Character is what was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

Be willing to shed parts of your previous life. For example, in our 20s, we wear a mask; we pretend we know more than we do. We must be willing, as we get older, to shed cocktail party phoniness and admit, 'I am who I am.'

I found that female pathfinders generally integrate characteristics commonly associated with being women - like the capacity to be intimate - with 'male' ones like ambition and courage.

Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads.

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

I know I'm never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples' way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.

I do think taking the 20s to take the most chances you can is important, because you're not going to hurt anyone else during that time. And if you do have a partner, you need a couple years to rehearse that relationship.

To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.

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.

Eventually, all mentor-disciple relationships are meant to pull apart, usually sometime in the mid-30s. Those who hang on, eventually the mentor drops the disciple, and that's no fun.

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

Back in 1968, when I was 30, my entire life blew up. I had a life plan, and it collapsed for no rational reason.

Spontaneity, the hallmark of childhood, is well worth cultivating to counteract the rigidity that may otherwise set in as we grow older.

Jill Clayburgh's life so closely paralleled mine, I feel as though a part of me lived a little through her and died a little with her.

No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in.

Like everyone else in the first weeks after the tragedy of 9/11, I was looking frantically for some way to help.

We really only have two choices. Play it safe, or take a chance. For me, pulling back because of fear has always made me feel worse.

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

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

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once.

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.

It seems like, to me, somewhere between 30 and 35 is a really, really good time to turn your eggs into babies.

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.

It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes.

In the first phase of shock over, say, your mortgage being called in or your job washed out, it's essential to engage with others and share the fear, release the feelings, do fun things to take your mind off it.

Sex and older women used to be considered an oxymoron, rarely mentioned in the same breath.

If you begin to think you are solely responsible for keeping your loved one alive and safe, you will eventually find yourself playing God. This phase can develop into an unhealthy, codependent relationship.

I did not give my daughter the kind of childhood anybody would want. The vision of the divided loyalty between a mother and father who don't live together and don't share in decisions is a great depravation for children.

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

In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.

The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.

In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.