I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

Just that, is one of those uncommon moments, those times when you don't wish for something else, for even one thing to be different; when you have no other needs or worries, where your insides are calm, and everything you were ever restless about, anything that had ever given you angst, is quieted to stillness. No steel ball in your chest, no breathless fear. No blue numbness of nearly passing out, no nagging doubts of the backstage mind. All of that, forgotten. It is just rightness, so rare.

She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.

An untold story has a weight that can submerge you, sure as a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean.

Rejection, though--it could make the loss of someone you weren't even that crazy about feel gut wrenching and world ending.

The romantic element is what the story Essential Maps for the Lost, sort of sits on, but all the stuff below the surface is really about family. It's about the baggage we bring, both the good and the hard stuff in that baggage. It's more about the other relationships. It's about mothers and fathers and sisters and dogs, all of the pieces. It's really more about - yes, love, in its widest usage.

...wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.