It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else's.

I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted.

But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."

I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.

The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind of meeting with them, instead of the thousandth.

In fairytales, when the mask came off, the handsome prince still loved the girl, no matter what -and that alone would turn her into a princess.