Maybe the reason I've never died in this story is that I've never had something worth dying for before.

if you don't get sick, you won't get well.

Here's a news flash for the ladies: for every one of you who thinks we all want a girl like Angelina Jolie, all skinny elbows and angles, the truth is, we'd rather curl up with someone like Charlotte - a woman who's soft when a guy wraps his arms around her; a woman who might have a smear of flour on her shirt the whole day and not notice or care, not even when she goes out to meet with the PTA; a woman who doesn't feel like an exotic vacation but is the home we can't wait to come back to.

parenting isn't a noun but a verb--an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat.

The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.

You can believe something really hard,' Faith says, 'and still be wrong.

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.