There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened.

I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.

Just because someone's pretty, doesn't mean she's decent.

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.

I told you, everyone understands a quest.

You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends.