Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.

If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.

I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.