Jennifer Weiner: But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You...

I've learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don't always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

Jennifer Weiner

failure learning love

Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.

Jennifer Weiner

teaching funny children

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive...it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.

Jennifer Weiner

grieving sometimes thinking

We dated in our early 20s, when we were working at the same newspaper. We broke up, got back together and broke up again. I wanted to get married and have kids, but he wasn't ready. So I married someone else, had my daughters and the marriage ended ... and there was Bill. He'd never gotten married and was finally, finally ready. We discovered that we were still each other's favorite people to talk to.

Jennifer Weiner

daughter kids people

Things happen, and you can't make them unhappen. You don't get do-overs, you can't roll back the clock, and the only thing you can change, and the only thing it does any good to worry about, is how you let them affect you.

Jennifer Weiner

clock doe worry

Okay, I thought. Here you are. You are here. And you move forward because that's the way it works; that's the only place u can go. You keep going until it stops hurting, or until you find new things to hurt you worse, I guess. And that is the human condition, all of us lurching along in our own private miseries, because that's the way it is. Because, I guess, God didn't give us any choice. You grow up, I remembered Abigail telling me. You learn.

Jennifer Weiner

growing-up moving-forward hurt

You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.

Jennifer Weiner

bank-accounts states soul

I have the best divorce of anyone I've heard of.

Jennifer Weiner

divorce heard

I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.

Jennifer Weiner

love-you long people

Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning.

Jennifer Weiner

heart morning character

People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world...But you have to do what's right for you.

Jennifer Weiner

choices people world

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.

Jennifer Weiner

steps heart book

Everyone has sorrow. Everyone has obligations. Everyone keeps going. You lean on the people who love you. You do the best you can, and you keep going.

Jennifer Weiner

sorrow love-you people

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

Jennifer Weiner

chicks feelings writing

He loved me. He loved me, but he doesn't love me anymore, and it's not the end of the world.

Jennifer Weiner

ends love world

I grew up with a feminist mom and the understanding that, as someone coming from a position of (relative) privilege, it was my job to speak up when things weren't fair.

Jennifer Weiner

feminist mom jobs

There's all kinds of love in the world, and not all of it looks like the stuff in greeting cards.

Jennifer Weiner

cards looks world

I will love myself, and my body, for what it can do- because it is strong enough to lift, to walk, to ride a bicyle up a hill, to embrace the people I love and hold them fully, and to nurture a new life. I will love myself because I am sturdy. Because I did not -will not- break.

Jennifer Weiner

strong new-life people

The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard...Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving.

Jennifer Weiner

love-you kids years

I hope that's what I've taught my girls - to be fair, to recognize their own position and their own good fortune, to use their voices to make things better. Beyond that, I'd tell them just to be kind.

Jennifer Weiner

be-kind voice girl

But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.