I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.

There are going to be moments of deep, deep doubts, and you have to have faith that your initial idea was good and just muddle through.

Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love you, no matter what.

It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.

Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and contolled it, whereas the sadness owned her.

He just wanted to look at her and know her life was marching along under the same arch of time and space as he is.

All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.