When you're a fifty-year-old woman, no one really bothers to look at you anymore, much less value your opinion. It's hard on the old ego. But damn, it does make it easy to get away with a lot.

Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions.

Sometimes, the person who could make you happiest is the one who waits patiently in the wings.

Death does not discriminate; whether saints or sinners, in the end, all are equal.

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.

Ha! Kids! You have no idea what you put your parents through, either. Wait till you have your own, you'll see. That's when you'll know what it really feels like." .. "What what feels like?"..."Love," said Angela.

Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.