Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.

The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.

It might sound ordinary for a woman to find out her husband's cheating on her, but not if you're the woman and it's your husband.

During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous.

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read.

She seems sort of lost.' I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.

We are all children until our fathers die.