My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. When our days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden.

When I looked at her, she appeared to be a different person from the one I'd known... She had rewritten everything, our history together, our friendship. Now I was the girl who'd stolen Andres; the girl who'd lied to her about who I was. Therefore, she owned me nothing.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

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

I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read Bradbury. He built such a moral world, where you have to make decisions and grow up.

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone?

The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole.