Nothing better for the hormones and worse for the heart than the right boy at the right time.

Feelings change fast when you're a teenager.

Anybody can become a widow. There aren't any special qualifications. It happens in less time than it takes to draw a breath. It doesn't require the planning, for example, that it takes to become a wife or a mother or any of the other ritual roles of womanhood.

Here is how it is for women. We become our schedules. That starts to feel good. Then it starts to feel necessary. Then it starts to feel like everything.

our sons and daughters are only passing through. ... If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first.

Friendship for me is made from a tapestry of personalities, each of whom shares a part of all I care about.

It's faith that really takes the courage, the belief in things unseen.