“Misunderstanding and distrust—the predominant elements of a novel. Without them, everyone lives happily from beginning.”

“And they...LIVED! Life isn't always ‘Happily Ever After’, rather, loving FOREVER, regardless.”

“Publishing a book is like being pregnant. By the end, you're just ready to get that baby out!”

“A great book increases my heartbeat as if I’m prey, melts my insides in anticipation of a first kiss, immerses me in its depths.”

“The most painful and jealously guarded secrets are perhaps the ones that everyone around us knows. Stupid tragedies. Useless tears.”

“Mattie loves to read. Was born to read. I love to listen to Mattie read. The way her voice rises two octaves above everyone else's. The way the words collide-an endless train of sounds that doesn't require breath.”

“I was realizing, for the first time, that everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. That there is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays...”