I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.

A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.

Because words were hills and valleys you traveled, so lovely sometimes that they hurt your eyes.

Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains.

Darkness does this. It finds all the places you are hiding in. It finds all the things you are holding onto tightly and makes you let go.

Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really love someone you don't know. But, I'm not so sure. Love doesn't seem to follow a plan; it's not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature--an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild relentless energy that is beyond your simple attempts at control.

Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.