Of course you can fall in love. You just have to let yourself. They don't call it falling for nothing. -Kate

I know about forgiving people and loving them anyway, even after they hurt you.

Time goes too quickly. This is the advice that my mother should have given me from her hospital bed. Instead of vague, unknowable quips like "Be careful what you wish for," she should have told me time slides away on a hillside of loose shale and takes everything in its path - dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.

That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.

The at-home mother's life: it was a race with no finish line.

The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bedsheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.

To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.