When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.

Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.

That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.

I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived.

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.

They weren't true stories; they were better than that.