The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you.

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained.