Isabel Gillies

“After I clean my face, I use combinations of sweet-almond, meadowfoam, grape-seed, coconut, black-currant, and argan oils to hydrate. Argan is probably my favorite for my face.”

“When I was growing up, my mother worked, and in the evenings, the whole family would sit around the dinner table and recount the day.”

“I love teenagers. I loved being a teenager.”

“The Oberlin/Cleveland area is where the underground railroad came out, so it's an interesting historical place. I love Ohio and really loved Oberlin.”

“When you have a traumatic event in your life, you change. You're not the same person you were, and you have to discover who you've become.”

“As moisturizers, oils rapidly penetrate the deeper layers of the skin, protecting against the breakdown of proteins in the cell wall with fatty and linoleic acids, mimicking what our bodies produce naturally. The oils also function as humectants, which help our skin retain moisture.”

“Sometimes it makes me sad that I didn't get to have one family for my entire life.”

“You see, I am friends with a lobsterman. Because we are friends, which feels lucky anyway, I get access to the most amazing fish. It's like having a backstage pass - a culinary jackpot that feels almost undeserved.”

“I've always liked the idea of memoirs, going into someone else's life, going through someone else's day and getting out of your own head.”

“I dropped off my kids from 10 to 2, went to the library, and just wrote. This is my second career - I'm 41 - and I'm a terrible speller.”

“You find out what you are made of when you have a broken heart. If it happens early and often, all the better.”

“I think even if you haven't been divorced, you can hopefully relate to having to navigate through a really difficult time and see how you can get through to the other side and how you can stay positive, even if there's some really bad stuff happening.”

“Therapy is therapy. Writing is for writing.”

“It's not easy to slather your face with oil. It requires a little bit of work to smooth it on and rub it in. You become more familiar with the feel of your own skin and face.”

“In New York, everybody looks great and is well dressed, but seeing someone in Ohio wearing Marc Jacobs is like spotting an owl in Central Park. Rare.”

“I don't think anyone would bat an eye if I wrote a song.”

“I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much.”

“In fact, you"-he pointed his fork at me-"look like a fairy tale.”

“If you are heartbroken and can't face the world, you need something with a fantastic plot. You won't be able to read anything boring because your attention span when you are heartbroken decreases by three-quarters.”

“My mother worked full-time running a foundation, but she found all the time in the world to have supper ready every night, feed us shirred eggs on the weekends, and produce a leg of lamb for my fourth-grade Bedouin feast at school.”