The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir

I admit it, given a choice, with a handful of exceptions, I tend to prefer the company of animals to the company of people. Animals are honest—there’s not a hint of pretense about them, they just unapologetically are who they are, and their capacity to love and be loved outshines ours by about a million.

You don't have to miss out on the joy of learning something you're passionate about. If it's in you, it's out there waiting for you.

If it’s meant to work out, it will. If it isn’t, it will just make me available for what I’m supposed to be doing instead.” (Sometimes it was reassuring; sometimes it wasn’t.)

Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone, smile because you had them in the first place.

There's a lot more to being human than this finite, mundane, earthbound world we live in, that we're really part of a much greater cosmic whole that's all around us.

Aren’t we lucky that there’s such a wide variety of dreams to choose from, and so many people who choose them?

I found my passion when I was a child and was blessed to be good enough at it to make it my career. I don’t think about the many times I fell nearly as often as I think about the many times I got back up.

I personally think it was Logan, by the way. I was always Team Logan.

There's no way to prepare for what somehow felt so sudden. He was here. Then he wasn't. He never would be again. And there was nothing I could do about it.

No way would I try to talk someone out of their dream, no matter what it is. Whatever it is, I believe you immerse yourself in it, work hard at it, express yourself through it, challenge yourself with it, give yourself every opportunity to fall in love with it, and explore the adventures that come with it. If it's the right dream for you and it allows you to support yourself, so that you're not pursuing your dream at someone else's expense, it will probably last a lifetime. If it stops being enjoyable and fulfilling and you fall out of love with it--if it starts feeling like drudgery to the point where it becomes painful and depressing-there's nothing wrong with saying, "Okay, what else do I want to do with my life?" and start pursuing that dream.

The end of the world, turned out to be just the beginning.

What on earth would we all do without one another?

Proving that sometimes serendipity shows up in our lives disguised as the worst news you could possibly imagine.

I’m so lucky to be me, because I get to hang around with myself. It had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with a lifelong awareness that I’ve always enjoyed my own company.

And thus began another adventure down the hilariously useless rabbit hole of second-guessing.

Relish it. Inhale it. Live it. Grab every moment of it. You’re so talented. And I don’t want you to ever get to the point where you think, ‘I don’t really feel like doing the show tonight.’ Do it. Give yourself a chance to be adored one more time because you will be. And you’ll carry this exquisite experience with you for the rest of your life.

I was very grateful that abortions were legal when my need for one came along in 1978, but to be perfectly honest, I'm sure I would have found an illegal way to terminate this pregnancy if it had come to that, since as far as I was concerned, it was my only responsible option.

In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as I’m comfortable with myself, my work, and my life, I don’t feel compelled to apologize for the fact that this is how old I am, and this is what I look like.

Losing my mom was the worst, most devastating thing that had ever happened to me. When I lost her, I didn’t just lose my mom. I lost my hero. My biggest fan. My fiercest protector and my wisest, most patient teacher, who taught me everything from my first ballet lessons to honesty, to not being defined by my circumstances, to always, always loving myself, because if I was special enough to be loved by her, I must be worth loving.

You’re standing there six feet in front of me, you whisper something to Bob and point at me, and then you laugh. You have a correction to give me? Give it. You want to tell me I’m doing something wrong? I’m all ears. But don’t point at me and laugh and expect me not to mind.

Lee did his damnedest to take care of me while I healed, but nothing made quite as much of a difference as the day he looked at me and said, “I love you so much it makes me want to cry.” Pain or no pain, walker or no walker, I’d never felt so powerful and so invincible in my life as I did in that moment. I still relive it, and it still fills me up.

Anyone who’s married to an addict who shows no interest in doing anything about it needs to be prepared for the probability that sooner or later, the only hope of surviving intact is to get out.

I don't think about the many times I fell nearly as often as I think about the many times I got back up.

Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place.

Lauren and Alexis each had their own, and Ed and I shared one, which was great fun. He was smart and funny and a real professional, and we quickly discovered that we had a lot in common. We were both happily married, with homes on the East Coast. Not only did we both come from New York theater backgrounds, but I’d forgotten that we actually won Tony Awards on that same magical night in 1976—mine for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical in A Chorus Line, and his for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play called Mrs. Warren’s Profession. We were even mutually addicted to the New York Times crossword puzzles, which we did together every day we worked.

And against my better judgment, I was also in love.

while we dancers were, to quote Tony, 'the blue-collar workers of the performing arts.

From childhood on, not wanting children was as unapologetic a fact about me as my ethnicity, and I was just as unapologetic about it as an adult, which put me on the receiving end of such mystifying reactions as “You don’t really know what it’s like to be a woman until you have children” and “Are you a lesbian?” Well, yes, I do, and no, I’m not, so take it or leave it.