I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

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

There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said... And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.

Cleaning up after themselves was a low priority for Margo and my mother. They had both recovered from cancer scares, failed marriages, and lost hope; in their opinion, dirt could wait.