She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.

I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.

Like life isn't complicated enough. You should at least be able to follow the signs.

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

I find that the more I depend on real life, the less interesting the story is. It's much more common for me to take something that almost-happened, or I wish had happened, and then follow that possibility.