My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

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

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers.

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.

No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.

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.