And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don't. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it's not true. But still. It is true.

The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

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

Look for beauty in everything.

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.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

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.