The first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok – the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address...

At that moment, Oliver realized that home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you.

They don’t like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

When they laugh, it sounds like confetti.

Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I’m wearing will never really fit.

she didn’t need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilter army-surplus jacket and combat bots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very...

The catch was this: Power always involved a loss of humanity.

I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I’m pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend. […] The thing is, they’re both...

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps...

Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.

Dylan Jerome,” the lawyer admits, “wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him.

Every life has a soundtrack.There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There’s another that reminds me of...

I’d do it all over again.

In the space between yes and no, there is a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you walk and one you leave behind; it’s the gap between who you thought you could be and...

In the past, even Alex’s promises hadn’t prevented a reoccurence. She didn’t have a choice. She wished he could see that as clearly as she did.

We sit for a few more moments, although there’s really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language....

‎Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for – you or me – and we all know who they’ll choose.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest – learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you.

How do you do it?””Do what?””All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like … like none if it mattered.”Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the...

Houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else’s.

Her voice was caught in the shell of my ear, as if it were the ocean.

The truth is the truth.

I don’t think we get a choice in who we fall for,” Ian whispers. “I think we just do.

See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at...

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.

Somewhere along the line, organized religion stopped being about faith, and started being about who had the power to keep the faith. You said that the purpose of religion was to bring people together. But...

The hardest part about being back in the human world was relearning emotion. Everything a wolf does has a practical, simple reason. There is no cold shoulder, no saying one thing when you mean something...

We pretend that we know our children, because it’s easier than admitting the truth–from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It’s far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little...

It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved...

What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you’d never forget?

Sometimes I think there’s a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that’s where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I...

But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn’t making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for...

But that’s what love is, isn’t it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away?

That’s the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

This is where I go, when I go:It’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through.I’m...

I used to sit in front of my father’s Jag, watching the raindrops run their kamikaze suicide missions from one edge of the windshield to the wiper blade.

People ask all the time how I’m doing, but the truth is, they don’t really want to know.

Dante believed God punished suicides by trapping the person’s spirit in a tree trunk. On Judgement Day, they were the only sinners who didn’t get their souls back, because they tried to get rid of...

My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn’t a social construct but an instinct.

All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

I wondered about the explorers who’d sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they...

I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.

Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.

He gently touched his mother’s cheek, felt her sorrow slip over his fingertips.

I don’t understand why it’s a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.

Huh?” I say.

We take the elevator to the third floor, to the office of Dr. Harrison Chance. His name alone has put me off. Why not Dr. Victor?