You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.

There are certain things that I'll hear about and that I think will make a great book and I put it in a file. Sometimes it's a situation that interests me, and I don't even realize what I'm trying to say about it until I get closer to it. Sometimes the book after that I've written 125 pages of, and I can tell you what the book is after that. I just sort of have a linear progression, but more than anything, the topics land in your lap. I don't feel that I go out searching for them.

There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable.

In the custom of mourning, the fabric of the night had been ripped, revealing a star at each tiny tear.

But once you throw a stone, there are ripples in the pond, even if you remove the rock.

That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?

People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away ?" I look away from her. "It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning.