in nineteen minutes you can norder a pizza and have it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk a mile. You can sew a hem. In nineteen minutes you can get revenge.

Listen,” she said. “I may not be what you want right now, but I’m all you’ve got.

It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn't know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for.

Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't blame them. It's superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need... if you throw salt over your shoulder... if you don't step on the cracks, then maybe you'll be immune. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this could never happen to you.

Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American.

Any highway . . . they all take you to the same place, don't they?

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.