To Grace, these were the things that mattered: my hands on her cheeks, my lips on her mouth. The fleeting touches that meant I loved her.

I'm pleased to see that the cab is cluttered with cough drop wrappers and empty milk bottles and bits of mud-smeared newspapers made brittle by age. Neatness makes me feel like I have to be on my best behavior. Clutter is my natural habitat.

I remember [in teenage years] thinking there were a lot of check boxes out there to sort teens into appropriate molds, and they didn't seem to make check boxes for whatever it was that I had grown up into. I definitely explore that a lot in my novels.

When he kissed me, his lips soft and careful, it was all the thrill of our first kiss and all the practiced familiarity of the accumulated memory of all our kisses.

Okay, outside," the clerk said. "Conversation outside. Bye! Have a nice night!

As always, there was an all-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his summer-narrowed hazel eyes, the straight nose that ancient Anglo-Saxons had graciously passed on to him. Everything about him suggested valor and power and a firm handshake.

Cole," I said, "Don't lose this number.