The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.

This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you.

We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don't heal by forming a secret society of one - by assessing about the only other 'one' we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment.

Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.