Some of my very closest friends are my guy friends, going back to the third grade, so I believe in the integrity of the male-female friendship.

Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.

When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You might grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume that it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for grandted, whuch might be the very thing so dear about it.

You see yourself as very average, ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about you, Rachel." (Something Borrowed)

I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

Well, shoes, bags and clutches are usually my big weaknesses - my husband always laughs when I call them 'investment pieces.'

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.