…he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he’d have to be the one to let go.”From Alice Hoffman’s “Local Girls”, pg.102.

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes...

Someone killed himself because of me once, Meredith said.People kill themselves because of what’s inside of them, not because of other people.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.

Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least...

Your grand daughter may not be looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for her.

He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find.

Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.

I only have one story now.The story was heroin. It was made out of sensation, not words; it was invisible and murderous and unstoppable. Sam disappeared from her slowly, like a snowman melting, until all...

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her...

Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they’d follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every...

She didn’t like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she’d been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and...

Sam said, Hey, you want to get high? Amy had taken his words to mean You are so beautiful I am undone by you.

If every life is a river, then it’s little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and...

But now I understood that, although words were God’s first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer...

Time wasn’t the same anymore. Doors were slamming shut before we even knew they’d been opened. Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as...

They weren’t true stories; they were better than that.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

…early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills.

I once believed that life was a gift. I thought whatever I wanted I would someday possess. Is that greed, or only youth? Is it hope or stupidity? As far as I was concerned the...

You want me to lie to you?” said McKay. I shrugged. Why not? I didn’t mind lies.

This was the purest instant he had ever experienced; the way he felt inside right then. If he had to be trapped in a forever he would choose this very moment. The black night, the...

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds....

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made...

Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn’t exist. We met before we were born and we’ll probably still know each...

Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.

We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world… When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the...

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old...

Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words so...

Crying wasn’t like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it’s done.

My mother was teaching me that the inside of something was not necessarily its outside. Always look carefully, she told me. Look with more than your eyes.

When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn’t recognize her friend. Juliet hadn’t bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved...

When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have...

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn’t hurt as much.

I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered “Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.

Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows–far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests,...

Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible; and all of the scars will remain under...

I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn’t see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him,...

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then...

Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.

For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It’s said that a woman’s life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever...