There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

You need to learn to write on demand, and to get critiqued without flinching. When someone can rip your work to shreds without it feeling as though your arm has been hacked off, you're ready to send your novel off to an agent.

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.

remember that every fire will burn itself out, even without your help.

The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke.

How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?

The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not.