For them, it was nothing but an ordinary day on an ordinary day on an ordinary weekend, but for her, there was something revelatory about the notion that wonderful moments like these existed.

They wouldn't understand, and I don't feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can't help smiling, knowing that you've completed me somehow. I love you, not just for now, but for always, and I dream of the day that you'll take me in your arms again

We're not the same people we were then. We've changed, we've grown.

I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don't write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.

I've come to believe that in everyone's life, there's one undeniable moment of change, a set of circumstances that suddenly alters everything.

By making the place and the people and the feelings real, by the time someone closes the cover of one of my books, they have, hopefully, felt all of the emotions of life.

I breathe deeply, taking in the fresh spring air. Though Beaufort has changed and I have changed, the air itself has not. It’s still the air of my childhood, the air of my seventeenth year, and when I finally exhale, I’m fifty-seven once more. But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking towards the sky, knowing there’s one thing I haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.