If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.

I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong.

Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.

Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.

You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied. Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.

She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.

...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.