For Colin Firth: You're a really great guy, but I'm married, so I think we should just be friends.

Ani felt a stirring, a hope, a winged thing waking up in her chest and brushing her heart with it's feathers.

She touched the healthy folds of skin around the baby's neck, wrists, and thighs, the dark lines crying for life made in his forehead, and thought how people start with wrinkles and end with wrinkles, grow into their skin and then live to grow out of it again.

My mama used to say, 'Are you sad? Then just wait a minute.

Her smile was peculiar - it made her nose wrinkle, not as though she smelled something unpleasant, but more that she was so amused, her whole face wanted to be a part of the smile.

Her eyes were distant, and she seemed to be listening to that voice that first told her the story, a mother, sister, or aunt. Then her voice, like her singing, cut through the crickets and crackling fire.

A heart is a heart in a child or a man.