I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

It wasn't awful to be dead. The stillness would almost be a relief. She wouldn't want pain, she wouldn't want to be wounded or mutilated. She could never shoot herself or jump off a building. But being dead wasn't unthinkable.

When I start writing, my unconscious, my conflicts, my thoughts all start to come up. So for me, writing is an exploration. I never know how my stories will end.

A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you've already written. Often the story you're looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul. He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person,' he said. 'You can never go home.

She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.

How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.