The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke.

My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

I had absolutely no trauma in my childhood. If anyone ever assumed that my books were autobiographical, they'd be sorely disappointed, because none of these things happened to me.

Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.

But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.