After all the fears, the warnings, after all, a woman's mistakes are different from a girl's. They are written by fire on stone. They are a trait and not an error.

She wanted to wake up like Dorothy and see Michael's face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. WHY, YOU JUST HIT YOUR HEAD. But it was not a dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy." -white oleander

Pick a better verb. Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an A-bomb.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.