Sitting around and waiting for your muse is not the best choice.

What I know now about life is this: your mother is a part of everything you do and everything you are.

No mother. Two small words, and yet within them lay a bottomless well of pain and loss, a ceaseless mourning for touches that were never received and words of wisdom that were never spoken. No single word was big enough to adequately describe the loss of your mother.

What good did it do to light the world on fire if she had to watch the glow alone?

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.

Nina knew the power of black and white images. Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.

There are always times in life that you don't fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That's what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself-even when you're most afraid.