My mother's blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.

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.

Margaret thought of all she knew for certain, that day would always follow night that love was never wasted nor was it lost.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.