When I cut out alcohol, my life got better. When I cut out alcohol, my spirit came back. An evolved life requires balance. Sometimes you have to cut out one thing to find balance everywhere else.

What’s the difference between a person who’s unfulfilled and a person who’s impossible to please?

That was the worst sin of all: trying too hard.

Parents often try to correct the mistakes of their own past, but they end up introducing new errors.

I knew AA worked miracles. What nobody ever tells you is that miracles can be very, very uncomfortable.

Tilting the wide brim of a martini glass toward the sky to catch whatever plunked into it.

I liked to curl up inside my own suffering and stay for a while.

I said yes to please you, and then I did whatever I wanted. I thought of it as “being nice.” Now I think of it as “being manipulative.”

Addiction was the inverse of honest work. It was everything, right now. I drank away nervousness, and I drank away boredom, and I needed to build a new tolerance. Yes to discomfort, yes to frustration, yes to failure, because it meant I was getting stronger. I refused to be the person who only played games she could win.