She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.

If you had grown up with me, this is one of the things I would have tried to teach you: Marry a man who loves you more than you love him. Because I have both now, and when it is the other way around, there is no spell in the world that can even out the balance.

They ask, how could this happen here? Well. How could it not happen here?

All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air.

He began to trace a pattern on the table with the nail of his thumb. "She kept saying she wanted to keep things exactly the way they were, and that she wished she could stop everything from changing. She got really nervous, like, talking about the future. She once told me that she could see herself now, and she could also see the kind of life she wanted to have - kids, husband, suburbs, you know - but she couldn't figure out how to get from point A to point B.

People change, but only if you give them room to do it.

A lot of the hallmark behaviors of autism - flat affect, stimming, not looking someone in the eye - could very easily be misinterpreted as signs of guilt.