A writer has to true to him or herself. Period. That’s it!

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.