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.

Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.

The woman who opens the door has a blue stain on her shirt and dark hair wound into a messy knot and the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. They're pale, like a lioness's, nearly golden, but they also look like they've done their fair share of crying, and we all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn't have any.

In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art.

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

My friends say I have two speeds: fast and blistering.

you never forget your first fall.