Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help

Love was like rain: it turned into ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.

Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot. 'I just wanted to wake you up', he said. Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over.

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.

And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.