What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

Nothing that doesn’t push you past your limits can change your life. It’s true of work, it’s true of parenting, and it’s true — a hundred times over — of love.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.

We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can't remember become the story of who we are.

People are always beautiful when you love them.

There on the sofa, as I nursed Maxie and her eyes slid closed, I said to the girls, 'I think nursing is where kisses come from.' I had been thinking about it. Nursing had to be the place where nurturing and sweet milk and soft skin and mouths and warmth all came together and started to mean something about love. I had always assumed kissing was a learned thing, like waving bye-bye or speaking a language. But since Maxie, I'd decided that it was innate, the adult version of something we know to do from the moment we're born. All of it tied together in the cycle of life.