But what Tyler longed for was to have The Feeling arrive; when every flicker of light that touched the dipping branches of a weeping willow, every breath of breeze that bent the grass towards the...

The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.

The appetites of the body were private battles.

They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.

You just stood up to your mother…. I should think now you could take on the world.

It seems to Henry, as he takes his seat in his usual middle pew, that women are far braver than men

By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding...

No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.

Inside the music like this, she understood many things. She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years. She understood that...

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far.

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it’s no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat,...

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic–you were made to feel guilty about everything

She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at ths age, to tell her he had pitied her for years.

You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is...