The best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.

The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there’s no right way and wrong way to do it. We’re all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he’s right or left-handed. After all: does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?

I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one

I know that the first person I kissed won't be nearly as important as the last person I kiss.

She suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man's skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he'd never studied. Maybe it would be like this, now, for Josie. Maybe her native tongue, from here on in, would be a string of lies.