I used to think when I had children that somebody else had the rule book and they hadn't given it to me, and everybody else knew how to do it right except me. I find the same thing in writing: you think that everybody knows what they're doing and that you don't.

I don't want to have to give up me, in order to be his.

Love is messy. If you really love someone, you can't avoid the pain. People die, people leave, things change, but sometimes it all works

It's hard to make changes. Things get so comfortable and you don't want to move. Maybe it would do you good to be a little uncomfortable for a while, and do something different.

Maybe some people just aren't meant to be in our lives forever. Maybe some people are just passing through. It's like some people just come through our lives to bring us something: a gift, a blessing, a lesson we need to learn. And that's why they're here. You'll have that gift forever.

People are so obsessed with that these days. As long as you're healthy, what difference do a few pounds make? Crazy diets. Thirteen-year-old girls on magazine covers who wind up in hospitals because they're so anorexic. Real women don't look like that. And who wants them to? No one wants a woman who looks sick or like she;s been from a refugee camp.

But even she had figured out that there was no point giving up a great job and following him to the ends of the earth, when he simply refused to make any promises about, or even discuss, the future.