I lived," Dor said, "but I was not alive.

Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

Whenever you have two characters in a book, whether it's a novel or nonfiction, you run the risk that the reader is going to like one more than the other. They're going to read one chapter and say, 'I can't wait to get back to the other guy.

What if I lose you?" "You can't lose your mother, Charley.

Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.

You're not going to get to college - you're not even going to be qualified, even to go to a community college, if you don't address the basic problem of literacy in America. And there's no reason - no reason - for us to have that problem.

When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.