... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.

Was anything in the world truer than that intuitive leap of the heart?

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them to boil over. That, very simply, was what adulthood must be all about -- acquiring the skill to bury things more deeply. Out of sight and, whenever possible, out of mind.

People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.

Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming?

People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.