She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.

But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.

I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly