If you think about someone you’ve loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.

That’s not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her?

Skin color doesn’t make you different,’ Melody said. ‘We’re all the same on the inside.’ ‘The only people who ever say that,’ Raymon replied, ‘are white.

When heaven breaks, who fixes it?

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?

Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.

If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon...

When you think you’re right, you’re most likely wrong.

It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place–because we become better people in it.

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out,...

The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you’re at the mercy of the universe for the first, and you’ve got some help with the second.

She suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man’s skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he’d never studied. Maybe it would be like...

It’s not because I don’t want to hurt Delia’s feelings. It’s because when she is bruised, I’m the one who aches.

For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from...

My dad used to say that living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse.

Real mothers don’t just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the...

if you were quiet and blended into the background, you were less likely to make waves

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

The thing that most people didn’t understand, if they weren’t in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that...

With a chronically ill child, there is only so much you can do for your other kids.

Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.

A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can’t someone be healed by happiness?

Although you hadn’t asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

Maybe that’s what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we’ve wounded the people we are trying to protect.

No child really chooses his religion; it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in.

There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn...

My grandmother lived a remarkable life. She watched her nation fall to pieces; and even when she became collateral damage, she believed in the power of the human spirit. She gave when she had nothing;...

I thought of all the magazine article I’d read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently...

Home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you.

Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas–a whole grammar made of light, for words to hard to speak.

I’ve got a Don Baylor,” J.T. said.”California sucks this year.”Ralph snickered. “I wouldn’t use a Baylor card to scrape dog shit off the street.

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. ‘Here’s what no one tells you,’ she said. ‘When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in,...

This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just...

It was a little like a scar on a polished wooden table–you’d try to see the rest of the gleaming surface, but your eyes and your fingers would be drawn to the pitted part, the...

He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again – the year I realize that love doesn’t follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable

The truth doesn’t always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies

Dr. Keller begins pacing. “I don’t think we’ve been hearing Faith just right. Her guard…the words..they sound alike.”What do you mean?”Your daughter,” Dr. Keller says flatly. “I think she’s seeing God.

History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them.

But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn’t feel like yours.That’s because home isn’t where you are. It’s who you’re with.

Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.’ It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in...

You figured that the only way I’d be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.

Sometimes there aren’t words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.

Choices are funny things-ask a native tribe that’s eaten grubs and roots forever if they’re unhappy, and they’ll shrug. But give them filet mignon and truffle sauce and then ask them to go back to...

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I’ve decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

The thing about a mom is that she’s always there. She’s the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash...

It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn’t know what was at stake to lose, you...

i don’t know. i don’t care. all i know is when you pay for something that’s supposed to give you a cup of coffee, you deserve to get your fucking cup of coffee.

There are skeletons in everyone’s closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover.