Katherine Center quotes:

It's fun to think about plants not just as decorations but as functioning parts of our yard's ecosystem that attract wildlife to the garden. We have hummingbirds, tons of bees, and many monarch butterflies. The kids love it! Though we're very laissez-faire with the garden and never put chemicals on it or even water it much!

We are big composters. We compost everything - bread, tea bags, coffee grounds. I even dump out my old coffee in the garden. We keep a mixing bowl on the counter and just fill it up as the day goes along, then dump it in the mulch pile before dinner and wash it with the dinner dishes.

Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are.

I'd love to paint our roof white - it's so hot down here in Texas! - and I'd love to have a rainwater collection system to save rain runoff for later. I also love to fantasize about keeping chickens in the backyard.

And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others-and, someday, you'll see how those two things are exactly the same.

I have an affection for tangible objects, like books and pages, but people sure do seem to love their Kindles! We're definitely in the middle of a revolution that will determine how people find, read, and experience stories.

I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart. Nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love.

Maybe the past is supposed to fade-and that's actually a kindness of human memory.

That was the tricky part. You poured inordinate amounts of time and attention and affection into your kids, but the result was indirect. You didn't point out a cat to your one-year-old and then watch him, minutes later, say 'Cat.' Instead, you pointed out a hundred cats to your one-year-old and then, one day, watched him point to a cat and say 'Mama.

The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

Beauty comes from tenderness.

Don't let anyone convince you that love doesn't matter.

Look for beauty in everything.

We're looking for stories that speak to us. We're looking for stories that connect us with something true. But, instead, a lot of the time we get strippers. All I'm saying is, when boys are writing the stories, the percentage of strippers is bound to go up. And real stories about real women kinda don't get written at all.

I felt like I had never really heard of a story that reflected the stuff I was going through as a mom. I came up with an idea for a story about motherhood that I would want to read.

All my main characters are people I'd love to sit around having coffee with. They are people who will tell you honestly about the things that scare them and worry them and trouble them. Because those moments of connection between women-when they really decide to be honest with each other about their lives-are some of the best things in life.

And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don't. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it's not true. But still. It is true.

Be brave with your life, so others will be brave with theirs.

I guess that's the upside of not being young anymore . . . You know from experience that the struggle always leads, in some way, to something better.

I like to write about people who are real and likeable. I like to write about people who tell their stories in that close and intimate voice we use with best friends. I love the closeness and honesty and vulnerability that come from characters who can talk that way.

If you feel lucky, then you are.

In fiction, you can be as true as you want. Real life is a different story.

It's always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.

It's more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit pretty for pictures.

It's so easy to think that your strengths don't matter.

It's vital to learn how to make the best of things.

My goal is to try to be as happy as I can - going through every day just as it is.

Our lives disappear, even as we live them.

People are always beautiful when you love them.

Something good was happening. My life was rising from the ashes, and the sight of it left me feeling something like hopeful.

Sometimes there is no way to hold your life together. Sometimes things just have to fall apart.

Success is doing the right thing for who you are.

That's what just hit me: How you really can't have everything. You have to give up the old to get the new. You can't be the child and the mom at the same time. You can't be your young self and your old self at the same time. You can't know what you know now and feel the way you did then. You can't, you can't, you can't.

The eyes see everything through the heart.

The human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.

There is no question that the objects that surround us impact our experience of the world.

There is no tenderness without bravery.

There on the sofa, as I nursed Maxie and her eyes slid closed, I said to the girls, 'I think nursing is where kisses come from.' I had been thinking about it. Nursing had to be the place where nurturing and sweet milk and soft skin and mouths and warmth all came together and started to mean something about love. I had always assumed kissing was a learned thing, like waving bye-bye or speaking a language. But since Maxie, I'd decided that it was innate, the adult version of something we know to do from the moment we're born. All of it tied together in the cycle of life.

We are at our finest when we take care of each other.

We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can't remember become the story of who we are.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.

You don't have to be perfect to be awesome.

We are only as great as our struggles. We only become who we are in the face of them.

We all carry our mothers inside us.