Gail Sheehy

Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.

If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

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.

Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.

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

I actually like getting out of my comfort zone. It shakes me up.

One of the ways we women often handicap ourselves is thinking that once we've made a decision or a commitment, we can't change.

We have to move from the unbridled pursuit of self-gain at the expense of others to recovering appreciation for what we gain by caring and sharing with one another.

You have a new role: family caregiver. It's a role nobody applies for. You don't expect it. You won't be prepared. You probably won't even identify yourself as a caregiver.

I'd visually have that idea. I'm diving off the end of the diving board. I'm not going to be worried about if I'm going to dive into a jellyfish or the water's going to be too cold or the boys are going to beat me. I'm just doing it. And if I do it, it's a good chance I'll make it.

The first thing one notices about Jill Abramson is her short stature. The second is her intensity.

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.

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.

I found the happiest woman in America is between 50 and 55, is happily married, has made significant progress in her career, and lives in a community where she can easily exercise outside. But the most important single thing was she had her last child before she was 35.

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.

No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.

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

I keep returning to the central question facing over-50 women as we move into our Second Adulthood. What are our goals for this stage in our lives?

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.

The delights of self-discovery are always available.