If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

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

My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together? Bread, of course.

I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.

I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart.

History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.

Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.