I can't think of anything more crushing than slowly, over time, realizing exactly how wrong you were about someone.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.

There are no really new stories anymore.

Problems always start long before you really, really see them.