Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?

The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.

What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.

Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you

When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.

A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, what'll it be? The duck doesn't answer because it's a duck.