It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

Usually my ideas are small.

The window was still open.” Mr Lisbon said. “I don’t think we’d ever remembered to shut it. It was all clear to me. I knew I had to close it or else she’d go on jumping out of it forever

Every letter was a love letter.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.