Because being comfortable meant she might lower her guard, and she could not let that happen.

I tend to avoid melodrama. I try to create very realistic settings and very realistic experiences and realistic responses to these experiences. Melodrama is the use of really big events that may or may not happen in real life - certainly they do, but they're not events that are common to most people. Most of the things that happen in my novels are things that could happen to people in real life.

I don't want to live the rest of my life thinking about you and dreaming of what might have been. Stay with me, Allie.

Beauty might prevail in the very short term, but in the medium and longer terms, cultural norms - primarily those values and norms influenced by family - were more important.

She was struck by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.

Because in the end, and no matter how hard it is, acceptance helps people move on with the rest of their lives.

Too many people seem to believe that silence was a void that needed to be filled, even if nothing important was said.