When there is nothing, there is the possibility of everything.

Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.

There are moments in your life when the big pieces slide and shift. Sometimes the big changes dong happen gradually but all at once. That's how it was for us. That was the day we discovered that friends can do things for you that your parents can't.

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.

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.

As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages.

But it was smell that carried memory.