An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they’re the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need...

It’s not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they’re all your favorites in different ways. But ask any...

Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.

At 17, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else’s thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you was as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away...

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.

I’m too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live

I could not remember my first kiss, but I could have told you Charlotte would be my last.

That the sum of a man’s life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes.I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my...

I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.

Betrayal was a stone beneath the mattress of the bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep...

Someone real,” I hear myself saying. “Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who’s smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to...

You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he’s really just hoping he makes it all the way...

well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.

When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her...

Scars are just a treasure map for pain you’ve buried too deep to remember.

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it’s not gender that makes a family; it’s love. You don’t need a mother and a father; you don’t necessarily even need two parents. You just...

words are like nets – we hope they’ll cover what we mean, but we know they can’t possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength – and the honesty – to break them down.

The cost of growth is always a small act of violence.

Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles–they kept reality from paralyzing you

On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger’s. Like me, they’re very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.

Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn’t even know existed.

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the’re hiding.

Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up.

I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.

Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with someone else?

Here’s a news flash for the ladies: for every one of you who thinks we all want a girl like Angelina Jolie, all skinny elbows and angles, the truth is, we’d rather curl up with...

If we don’t change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.

Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.

be a good listener, don’t judge and don’t put boundaries on someone else’s grief.

Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

You can believe something really hard,’ Faith says, ‘and still be wrong.

Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter’s behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

Elise Vasquez and I stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the woman we both feel we lost, and may be never really had.

If you end your story, it’s a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don’t, it belongs to anyone’s imagination. It stays alive forever.

What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn’t starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn’t enough. I had a hole in me,...

The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.

Edward: “Wait–you were trying to hit on me?”Susan: “Damn straight.”Edward: “The thing is, I’m not. Straight, I mean.

When I see him, his frame filling the doorway, I do not feel passion, excitement. I can’t remember if I ever have. He makes me feel comfortable, like a favorite pair of shoes.

High school students were cannibals; they fed off your broken heart while you watched and then shrugged and offered you a bloody, apologetic smile.

When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it’s safe inside your mouth.

My whole life was about her, what if her whole life wasn’t all about me?

Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.

She’d been in labor for nineteen hours; I completely understood why she wanted to pass the buck. ‘You are so beautiful,’ her husband crooned, holding up her shoulders.’You are so full of shit,’ Lila snarled,...

It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she...

I used to think I’d be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase–not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been–what would you...

Isn’t that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who’s your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night.Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the...

We’re [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we’re just praying we won’t screw up too badly.