Sometimes you weren’t supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.

Summer was a lady who didn’t give up her spotlight easily.

But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing...

No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.

It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart scent that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds shaped like true-love hearts.

Under her thick pancake makeup, her skin had been pockmarked, but he would stare at her adoringly from his cot at night and imagine her scars were constellations, a secret map to a far-off, happy...

Doctors say there’s no such thing as chemo brain, but ask any chemo patient.

Waverleys know where to find the truth, they just can’t stomach it.

Sitting at the old patio table she’d cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow...

[…] o amor muda o jogo.

…Agatha had declared that her friendship to Georgie still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn’t just go away because they no...

Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.

Motherhood, true motherhood, was what went on when no one else could see.

Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she...

I love that my dad has stopped asking me when I’m going to get a real job.

Eby knew all too well that there was a fine line when it came to grief. If you ignore it, it goes away, but then it always comes back when you least expect it. If...

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women’s Society Club had been about...

All my life I’ve chased dreams of what could be. For the first time in my life, I’ve actually caught one.

Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I’m a work in progress.

Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don’t know the whole story.

The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

I think my characters are more wish fulfillments than they are mirrors. They see things I don’t and live in a world I can only enter through words.

You’d be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you’d do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.

You can’t change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here.

…everyone knows that road, the one leading out of town into a deep green expanse of pastures and old farmhouses, which at first makes it seem like you’re entering a fairy tale, something sweet and...

It had always fascinated him that she’d consumed so many words, that her head was full of stories, told a thousand different ways.

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.

Life is about experience… You can’t hold on to everything

To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.

I’m a huge fan of Alice Hoffman, Fred Chappell and Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

But she stopped herself. That wouldn’t make it right. You didn’t forgive because it was the only choice you thought you had. That didn’t make it forgiveness, that made it desperation. She’d always been too...

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Once he’d asked, “Don’t you want to read? There are hundreds of books in the sitting room.”She had laughed and said, “I’ve read them all. I want to remember them the way they were. If...

There’s an old hymn called ‘How Can I Keep from Singing?’ That’s what writing feels like to me. I have to write. It’s intrinsic to who I am. So it was a natural choice for...

It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good.

There was an art to the male posterior. That’s all there was to it.

I’m a classic stress-eater, so I know a lot about how eating can become a way of hiding from what’s really wrong. I escape into food. But some people escape into books. Some into relationships...

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

He stared up at the moon, which looked like a giant hole in the sky, letting light through to the other side.

I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.

But he’d loved only Eby. You didn’t need a mirror to tell you that you were beautiful when you had proof like that.

Magical realism is a blending of the unusual or supernatural into an otherwise ordinary setting. And, to me, this perfectly describes the South. ‘The Sugar Queen’ involves a lot of magical happenings, but in a...

When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in...

I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

It was a remarkable realization to Eby, that we are what we’re taught. That was why the Morris women were what they were. It was because they knew no different.

Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren’t always shown the path in life you’re supposed to take. But if there was one thing she’d learned in the past few weeks, it...

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in.

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of...