A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18. It gets harder the older you get, as you make different life choices, as people say in America. A lot of women's friendships begin to founder.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

You're a library of me.

It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.

Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.