I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

I am not keeping my distance because it is uncomfortable for me, but because it is uncomfortable for them.

It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.

So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it.

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.