Just the word beautiful was seductive – but what did it really mean? Beauty was a soft word that ached with possibility, pliant as dough. You could not presume to define it, she realized, because...

People just want to be happy, she thought.

I often ask the question: Is it impossible to have a simple life?The world is not simple, Claire said. The world is not simple. Joe repeated the phrase like the line of a great poem.

As corny as it sounds, Gallagher said, life is very long. You’re supposed to mess up when you’re young and other people sometimes benefit from your mistakes-as you did in this case. But things rarely...

You couldn’t teach kindness, she thought. It was something you were born with. People either had it or they didn’t.

Things didn’t really go away. You just learned to push them deeper.

Adults make mistakes too.

People wanted to be redeemed, she thought. Everyone did. We’re only human.