I could tell her from personal experience that when people we love make choices we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness. But all this took me a lifetime to discover, and where has it gotten me?... Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned.

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.

We all want to know what went wrong, even when there isn't really an answer to that question.

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth.

I am an activist. I have a really big pulpit with my fiction and I love knowing that I can make people think.