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.

Home is not a place, but rather, the people you love

You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not." I don't know how to respond to that; it's like being told after thirty-five years that the sky, which I've seen as a brilliant blue, is in fact rather green.

A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.

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

Religion isn't in your DNA. you don't believe just because your parents believe.

What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.