Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that ours didn't go on forever.

Toward the end of their relationship she'd told him once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. Its as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." He tried to deny it, but she didn't believe him. "I'm a woman - I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. Its like you keep waiting for her to pop out of thin air to take you away from all this.

When I am in the process of conceiving a story, I make sure it can be told with words and pictures. The story has to be creative, original and interesting in both areas. Many stories get rejected because they feel derivative.

That he would love her no matter what she told him, and that he was the kind of man who loved her already and would love her forever.

He was the kind of man everyone would fall in love with, even if they didn't want to.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.

Three weeks ago, he’d seen hail fall from the sky, only to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it’s important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion.