There were so many ways to be twenty-six years old.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

She thought about him all the time - not so much about Doug the individual, but rather about the nature of love, and the shock of learning how quickly it could disappear.

If things had been different, she would be in Carolyn's place right now. She didn't want that sort of existence, but there was something so attractive about the security of feeling like you had stopped moving toward your life, and actually arrived.

In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become.

I like dressing up for dates and dissecting a dinner conversation with a new guy to determine if he might be The One.

Timing was everything when it came to being a woman—the moment you entered the world could seal your fate.