I don't particularly like being angry about stuff. I'd rather hang out with my daughter and write my little books.

Is it still there?" I asked, staring at his head, bent over, as he wedged the stethoscope beneath my left breast. And then, before I could stop myself, "Does it sound broken?

As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did.

Maybe it was inertia -or worse, fear- that was keeping me in the same place.

I don't trust happiness. I turn it over as if it were a glass at a flea market or a rug at a souk, looking for chipped rims or loose threads.

There are two kinds of houses in the neighborhood where I grew up-the ones where the parents stayed married, and the ones where they didn’t.

I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.