I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.

But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.

I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.

The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.