Grief doesn't necessarily make you noble. Sometimes it just makes you crazy, or primitive with fear.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

The truth, or success, of any writer's story lies partly in its specificity and its emotional honesty.

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.