Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who's been abandoned by family, husband, children and fortune believes in God.

You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?

I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a bady's beshattered diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

Nothing more exhilarating ... than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.