...in the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the young friend you gossiped with, a date or double date, someone to share a tent with in Darfur, a fellow election monitor in Bosnia, a mentor, a teacher you'd laughed within a classroom or a faculty lounge, or the board member you'd groaned with after a contentious meeting

That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves.

And my first item on each day's list is this: Wake up. If I can check that off, I've already done something and can get on with the business of living and trying to honor the memory of those I love who are no longer here.

You don't have to have one emotion at a time.

But it takes so little to help people, and people really do help each other, even people with very little themselves. And it’s not just about second chances. Most people deserve an endless number of chances.

...in the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the young friend you gossiped with, a date or double date, someone to share a tent with in Darfur, a fellow election monitor in Bosnia, a mentor, a teacher you'd laughed within a classroom or a faculty lounge, or the board member you'd groaned with after a contentious meeting

As a reader, you’re often inside one or more character heads, so you know what they’re feeling, even if they can’t exactly say it, or they say it so obliquely that the other characters don’t catch it. Readers are frequently reminded of the gulf between what people say and what they mean, and such moments prod us to become more attuned to gesture, tone, and language.