Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary, no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. You've been torn asunder, invested with an ancient, incomprehensible magic. It's the one thing that we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

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

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.

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

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?