What do you do when the story changes in midlife? When a tale you have told yourself turns out to be a little untrue, just enough to throw the world off-kilter? It’s like leaving the train at the wrong stop: You are still you, but in a new place, there by accident or grace, and you will need your wits about you to proceed.

Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

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

the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

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

Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare.

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.