“Life is the messy bits.”

“Claire: Dear Claire, "What" and "If" are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if? I don't know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love, then it's never too late. If it was true then, why wouldn't it be true now? You need only the courage to follow your heart. I don't know what a love like Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for, love to cross oceans for but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it, that I will have the courage to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope one day that you will. All my love, Juliet”

“I am a book.Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pinesa natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dustyfrom shelves.Steamy and anxious, abused and misused,kissed and cried over, smeared, yellowed, and torn,loved, hated, scorned. I am a book. I am a book that remembers,days when I stood proud in good companyWhen the children came, I leapt into their arms,when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts,when the men came, they held me like a lover,and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs,next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs,my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling,then forgotten, I crumbled,dust to dust. I am a tale of woe and secrets,a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed,born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot.A family too close to see the blood on its hands,too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge,deaf to the screams of mortal wounding,amused at decay and torment,a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires. I am a tale of woe and secrets,I am a mystery. I am intrigue, anxiety, fear,I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black,hiding from myself, from dark angels,from the evil that lurks withinand the evil we cannot lurk without. I am words of adventure,of faraway places where no one knows my tongue,of curious cultures in small, back alleys, mean streets,the crumbling house in each of us. I am primordial fear, the great unknown,I am life everlasting.I touch you and you shiver, I blow in your ear and you follow me,down foggy lanes, into places you've never seen,to see things no one should see,to be someone you could only hope to be.I ride the winds of imagination on a black-and-white horse,to find the truth inside of me, to cure the ills inside of you,to take one passenger at a time over that tall mountain,across that lonely plain to a place you've never beenwhere the world stops for just one minuteand everything is right.I am a mystery. -Rides a Black and White Horse”

“It's the strangest feeling at the end of pregnancy: you look down at this huge belly and try to imagine how some little person, whom you haven't even met, is going to emerge from it any day and completely change your lives. First, you wonder how this pregnancy, to which you've grown so accustomed over much of the last year, can, with barely any notice, come to an abrupt end. Then you try to fathom how this baby is ever going to come out; your bowling ball stomach seems misproportioned for what lies between it and the outside world. And only then do you realize what it all means-that the easy part, pregnancy, is almost over, and it's time to gear up for the tough stuff: childbirth!”

“We passed from laughter to terror which, like love and hate, are close relatives.”

“That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.”

“Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.”