Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak.

My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book. ~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

No one on the street thought anything of the downtown girl dressed in black who had paused in the middle of midtown foot traffic. In her art student camouflage she could walk the entire length of Manhattan and, if not blend in, be classified and therefore ignored.

I like gardening - it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.

I mean, if I went into my closet, I could find a previous draft and try to figure that out, but it takes a long time for me to find the voice to tell a story in. I was working from other points of view for a couple years there.