Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.

Told with rare honesty, My Accidental Jihad is the story of Krista Bremer's lifelong quest for insight and understanding, a search that leads her out of the Pacific surf to journalism school in North Carolina and through the complex challenges and unexpected joys of a cross-cultural marriage and family. This book is a powerfully personal account of the courage and hard work necessary to open one's heart and keep it that way.

I think I'm someone who can prattle on a long time about something, which serves me well as a novelist, but it's the enemy when I'm writing short stories.

I, the lone inhabitant of my body and life, am inescapably large to myself, but also ridiculously, inconceivably small.

Novels definitely come more naturally to me. When I write short stories, it's always a fight against it expanding.

Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.

With impeccable prose, dry wit, and uncommon wisdom, Ted Thompson brings to life one family's painful disappointments and powerful resilience. The Land of Steady Habits combines Austen's shrewd mastery of domestic economics with Updike's compassion for the melancholy commuter to make something elegant, fresh, and brilliant.