Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.

After Memory Keepers Daughter, it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.

She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.

Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

Norah watched him, serious and utterly absorbed in his task, overcome by the simple fact of his existence.

His love for her was so deeply woven with resentment that he could not untangle the two.