That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.

She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.

The hallmark of my books is the relationships that define women's lives.

To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.

And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don't know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.

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

I didn't know how...deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life.