There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.

That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.

I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.

She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.