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

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

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...

For stubborn souls like Lisette, death was easier than the courage it took to actually change your life.

At any given time I’m listening to the Cory Branan, Leonna Naess, Eve 6, the King’s Noyse, Sean Paul, Green Day, the BoDeans, Buddy Holly, Nowell Sing We Clear… the list goes on and on....

When you have to do something, you have to do it. Putting it off only makes it worse. Believe me, I know.

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

Love always hurts. That’s one thing I know you know. But it’s worth it. That’s what you don’t know. Yet.

He claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home.

Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, “When you learn someone else’s secret, your own secrets aren’t safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Some of Bay’s fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into...

You can’t change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don’t like the ending, you can make up a new one.

My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there’s more to what’s written on the page...

The air around her was cool lately, as if she were creating a vacuum with her unhappiness.

He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch....

Candy is my religion.

He hadn’t meant to get so angry at Morgan. He didn’t often get angry at other people. There was no sense in it. The person you were angry at was rarely ever repentant. Now, getting...

He wasn’t used to people saying no, and Eby felt sorry for him, the way she’d always felt sorry for those who had everything and it still wasn’t enough.

Don’t be vain. What you look like doesn’t matter. It’s the deed that matters.

Cancer is too real, and too awful, and I can’t make it good or magical. I couldn’t even read a book where a character had cancer, for a while… But now I’ve reached a point...

Coffee, she’d discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to...

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate...

Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that...

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn’t what he expected. He wished he’d paid more attention to the story.

The Waverley sisters hadn’t been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice.

She knew him in that way you can only know a person as a child. Like if you cracked away the adult shell, you’d find that child, happily sitting inside, smiling at you.