If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.

I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.

I'm not much like my mother; that role falls to my brothers, who have more of her blithe and freewheeling spirit.

If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.