Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

In midair, dangling lost above the world.

I've always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that's okay. I know I work in my own way.

If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.