All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

Sometimes, Edie, a person's feelings aren't rational. At least, they don't seem that way on the surface. You have to dig a little deeper to understand what lies at the base

You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing.

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

She's one of the few people able to look beyond the lines on my face to see the twenty-year-old who lives inside.

Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?