A fear Paul had transformed all these years, like a gifted alchemist, into anger and rebellion.

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

In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.

Grief, it seemed, was a physical place.

Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

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

Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.