The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

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

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

the mother's first job is to raise a daughter strong enough to outlast her.

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course.

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

If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.