There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.

I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.

She supposed that all those years of loving a person who was dishonest had taught her a few things.

But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.

We are all #humans and we all make #mistakes. We #hurt people even if we don't want to.

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.