Remember what I've told you. Remember me.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever.

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing