i realize i will never hear from dena again, and i will never call her. it gives me a chill. it is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it's what you want. it's like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person become finite.

Sometimes you’re loved because of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.

He tells me that the best man I will ever find will be attracted to other women. I hear this as another fact I am too old not to know. More proof of how unprepared I am to love anyone.

Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand.

But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.

I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

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.