The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing.

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.