I never wanted to live forever," she says. "I just wanted enough time.

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

The only characters I ever don't like are ones that leave no impression on me. And I don't write characters that leave no impression on me.

So many of the things I've wanted are the things I've been taught to fear.

There was a desperate undercurrent to our marriage--a feeling of being in a dream from which I couldn't seem to awaken. A nagging sense that my life, laid out so neatly like the clothes Deirdre left on my divan, was no longer my own.

I think she's brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.

He says one word, nodding into the daylight. "Look." It's an astounding word. It's a gift.