The women ranged in age, but they were all old enough to know that in the currency of friendship, empathy is more valuable than accuracy.

Caroline had felt more comfortable thinking of beauty as something separate from her, like a scarf or a coat you could check before going in to a show. She wondered now, however, if she had...

Maybe your mind won’t remember what I cooked last week, but your body will.

When Marion had been a teenager, she wanted a tattoo. As an oldest child who did mostly what was expected of her, she had been fascinated by the abandon tattoos implied, the willing, blind leap...

Stories of her children when they were small, their round little bodies barely containing their personalities, which bloomed and glittered and melted into her.

What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the...

Jack’s marketing books had been a part of her life for so long that she had ceased to register their presence, simply moving them from the couch to the coffee table, from the bed to...

It was interesting. Isabelle thought, the children that chose you. Some come through your body; others came in cars in the middle of the night.

You’re not traveling if you already know everything.

You could never be certain what you would find in a book that had spent time with someone else.

TIME WENT ON, life with the children unfolding in its own ecosystem, small plastic toys seeming to grow up from the carpet like mushrooms, clothes falling to the floor like autumn leaves. Every once in...

She became a frame for the picture that was her son and daughter.

I walked across a bridge that doesn’t exist. And after that, being scared just didn’t seem so important anymore.

She found herself wondering at what point in her life she had ceased to be Gulliver and had become the strings holding him to the ground.

I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.

Lillian sometimes wondered why psychologists focused so much on a couple’s life in their bedroom. You could learn everything about a couple just watching their kitchen choreography as they prepared dinner.

You know,” Marion said, “I met a woman once when I was a teenager. I knew she had gone through a lot but she was so strong, so compassionate. I asked her how she could...

I’ve been wondering,” Isabelle commented reflectively over dessert, “if it is foolish to make new memories when you know you are going to lose them.

She looked at the produce stalls, a row of jewels in a case, the colors more subtle in the winter, a Pantone display consisting only of greens, without the raspberries and plums of summer, the...

She simply didn’t have an interest in men anymore. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them, she just knew how easily they broke.

She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what...

A risk is a risk because it’s avoidable.

When Sean died she understood for the first time how completely human beings were dependent upon a suspension of disbelief in order to simply move forward through their days. If that suspension faltered, if you...

Life is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.

There were moments in life, Marion thought, when you reached back, baton in hand, feeling the runner behind you. Felt the clasp of their fingers resonating through the wood, the release of your hand, which...

She felt about her zester the way some women do about a pair of spiky red shoes–a frivolous splurge, good only for parties, but oh so lovely.

Isabelle had always thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child, when the grown-ups were having conversations and she was expected to listen politely– and even, although she...

We’re all just ingredients. What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal.

Each person’s heart breaks in it’s own way. Every cure will be different, but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe.

While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many...

When a couple came to class together, it meant something else entirely – food as a solution, a diversion, or, occasionally, a playground.