Angie: “How do I pitch these ideas to her?”Mira: “From a distance, preferably wearing body armor.

Stacey: “I’m surprised you haven’t thrown me out.”Comfort: “At your current weight, I’d need some sort of catapult.

It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him...

Goddamn, sometimes it hurt to be free.

Caro: “Bite me.”Ruby: “I gave that up in kindergarten.

She remembered how it had felt and tasted, that slowly descending depression, like a thick glass jar that closed around you, sucking away the air you needed to breathe, creating a barrier between you and...

As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She...

Fifteen minutes later, Betsy came thundering down the stairs. “I’m going to the mall with Sierra to see a movie.”Michael leaned forward, switched off the television. “Can you please rephrase that in the form of...

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you’ll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of...

That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already...

Liam learned that it was possible to appear to move forward when you were really standing still.

And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don’t know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.

He’d learned in the past few months that telling a girl what to wear–even one the size of a golf club–was a bad idea. Histrionics often followed.

Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then...

At one point, she’d wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. And then she’d remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn’t: cleanup.

The falling apart of a man’s life should make more noise. It should startle passesrby with its Sturm and Drang. It ought to sound like the Parthenon crashing down. Not this ordinary, everyday kind of...

This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.

. . .you sounded frustrated and pissed off and amazingly happy

…This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he’d unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed.Nerve endings; he’d said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the...

A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE…AND THE SENATE.

I look at people who aren’t us and I hate them.

To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can’t let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off...

Those are exactly the kind of memories I try to avoid, but they’re like abestos: invisible and deadly. You need special gear to get rid of them.

She knew this pain would fade again; like a sunburn, it would heal itself and leave her slightly more protected from the glare.

That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were...

Even as she listened to murmurs of support, she heard the relief in other people’s voices, the immense gratitude that it wasn’t their child who had died. She heard I’m so sorry until she despised...

Do you love him?”How would I know?”You’d know.

Memories are who we are, Tul. In the end, that’s all the luggage you take with you. Love and memories are what last.

Ser jovem não nem nada a ver com amor. Uma mulher pode ser uma menina e ainda assim conhecer o próprio coração.

She pouted prettily, and he wondered if that was one of the things they taught wealthy young girls at schools like Miss Porter’s. If not, it had been passed down from one generation to another...

It had been years since she question his fidelity, but he’d stepped on to the old fame track again, and that was where the road had taken them before. Infidelity could be forgiven, but forgetting...

He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.

Sometimes you simply made the wrong choice and you had to live with it. You could only change the future.

A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.

A generous donor (who had no doubt lived a life that imperiled his mortal soul) had granted [the Sisters] more than one hundred waterfront acres.

The trip from Portland to New York City was like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. It went on and on, and by the time you reached your destination, there was no sensation left in your...

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that’s real...

Girls like you can’t understand,” Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn’t know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a...

she should have told me that times slides away on a hillside of lose shale and takes everything in its path-dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.

Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon’s blade.

This time I really am going to light the world on fire,’ she said, laughing. ‘I finally have a fucking match.

Vietnam…war…it did something to us. Or maybe not. Maybe the bad seeds were always in me, and war gave them a dark place in which to grow.

He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut...

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be…Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps,was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just...

Lulu twirled in front of Jolene, banging into the seat. her eyes sparkled in that I’m-either-going-to-scream-or-fall-asleep-any-second kind of way.

She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed a dream, but it had transformed her, changed her from poor motherless and abandoned Tully to a girl poised to take on the world. The goal made her...

Hey, Meg,” she said without preamble. I need you to write a letter of recommendation for me. I’m applying for grad school.”Meghann screamed into the phone. “Oh, my God! I’m so proud of you. I’m...

but that shadow self of hers wasn’t so sure. The ugly, toxic thought was smaller than a drop of blood, yet it poisoned the entire stream.

The measure of a society is its compassion.

Marah will come looking for me one day, Kate had said, pressing the journal into my hands. Be with her when she reads it. And my boys… show them these words when they can’t remember...