“Never, ever give up. Ever. Just because one editor rejects you doesn’t mean the whole world is crashing down. Look outside. Sky’s still standing? Yep? Okay, send your work to someone else.”

“Dedication. DEDICATION. That is the only way to become a writer. Write every day. Write until your fingers bleed, your eyes bleed, your soul bleeds. From that blood, stories are born. It's worth it.”

“From the outside looking in, everything looked completely ordinary. The problem was being on the inside, looking out.”

“I loved Duncan and I loved being his mother but I wasn't sure I was prepared to be only his mother. Before we were even married, when Russell and I had gotten our dog, Humbert, I had walked him early one morning, and as I stood on a line for coffee, someone had offered him a dog treat. "I always ask the mommy first," she said, looking at him expectantly. "Oh, I'm not his mother," I said, "I'm just his...friend," and she looked at me with complete contempt. "You're his mother," she had scolded, "Poor dog.”

“in love: a momentary instance of bein almost interested in someone else as in oneself!”

“London wasn't the first city I'd lived in, but it was certainly the largest. Anywhere else there is always the chance of seeing someone you know or, at the very least, a smiling face. Not here. Commuters crowd the trains, eager to outdo their fellow travelers in an escalating privacy war of paperbacks, headphones and newspapers. A woman next to me on the Northern Line on day held the Metro just inches from her face; it was only three stops later that I noticed she was not reading but crying. It was hard not to offer sympathy and harder still to not start crying myself.”

“..he was the only one in the world who understood the secret living thing that dwelt in he pit of my stomach...the thing that reared its head from time to time to sear my insides with fear.”