All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return.

I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.

They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again.

Where did you go?" "To the end of the driveway," my mother says. "I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out." I wince. "Do you have to be quite so graphic?" "What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room?

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

When I'm with you, bells go off in my head like a moving truck that's backing up.

Sometimes when you find something you didn't really realize you were looking for, you just don't know how to react.