“I've tried to shield myself from life and inhabit my own small, safe corner; but there's no immunity from life.”

“But I've discovered being a writer is an ongoing apprenticeship, just like everything else in life that matters to me-being a mother, a wife, a daughter, or simply a woman alive in the world, content to be myself. Today at thirty-two, I am glad to wake up each day and begin.”

“Yet I remember the rule I set for myself-that I do something different from my mother. . . I started to believe I couldn't really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents... That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me. ”

“Into every life a little rain must fall.”

“All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.”

“We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.”

“All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I'd tried to complete my life with someone else--first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn't want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself.”