You need to learn to write on demand, and to get critiqued without flinching. When someone can rip your work to shreds without it feeling as though your arm has been hacked off, you're ready to send your novel off to an agent.

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.

Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.

Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

You have everything. A family, a great job, a lot of people who look up to you. You've got a place to go home to. So go.