I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live

When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recogonize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point taht wasn't there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn't new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.

Here's what no one ever tells you about love: it hurts, having your heart broken

Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?

And he made love to her, offering his body in both tenderness and anger, unsure which was the best way to pass her bits of his soul so that she could patch her own with it

A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.