He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing though each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean—oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.

People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

She remembered was hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.

My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it.