It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am n…

- Gabrielle Hamilton

The reader reads aloud, with a sing-song up … then down … then down again cadence. My mood shifts from merely reluctant to derisive. It’s a tired rea…

- Gabrielle Hamilton

I was purely content to sit in the car and wander around my own mind. Watching the world itself, the people in it, and my whole internal life was mor…

- Gabrielle Hamilton

I’m not afraid of the real truth. There is nothing you can tell me about yourself that is going to make me clutch my pearls.

- Gabrielle Hamilton

Badass is a juvenile aspiration.

- Gabrielle Hamilton

Be careful what you get good at doin', cuz you'll be doin' it for the rest of your life.

- Gabrielle Hamilton

How can it be, after all this concentrated effort and separation, how can it be that I still resemble, so very closely, my own detestable mother?

- Gabrielle Hamilton

You are always going to face forces that can bring you to your knees.

- Gabrielle Hamilton

My father has said a hundred times, and I have paid attention, that it's stupid to let money be the reason you don't do something.

- Gabrielle Hamilton