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Religion Was Supposed To Be A Blanket Drawn Up To Your Chin To Keep You Warm, A Promise That When It Came To The End, You Wouldn't Die Alone - But It Could Just As Easily Leave You Shivering Out In The Cold, If What You Believed Became More Important Than The Fact That You Believed.

-Jodi Picoult

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Religion Was Supposed To

Jodi Picoult

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Religion Was Supposed To Be A Blanket Drawn Up To Your Chin To Keep You Warm, A Promise That When It Came To The End, You Wouldn't Die Alone - But It Could Just As Easily Leave You Shivering Out In The Cold, If What You Believed Became More Important Than The Fact That You Believed.

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I Write Adult Fiction, But A Good 40 To 50 Per Cent Of My Readers Are Teenagers. I Love That If They Have To Grow Up And Move Past Jk Rowling They Can Move To Me. From Jo To Jodi!

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There Are All Sorts Of Losses People Suffer - From The Small To The Large. You Can Lose Your Keys, Your Glasses, Your Virginity. You Can Lose Your Head, You Can Lose Your Heart, You Can Lose Your Mind. You Can Relinquish Your Home To Move Into Assisted Living, Or Have A Child Move Overseas, Or See A Spouse Vanish Into Dementia. Loss Is More Than Just Death, And Grief Is The Gray Shape-shifter Of Emotion.

I Am Not A Religious Man. I Have Not Attended A Service For Many Years. But I Do Believe In God. My Own Practice Of Religion, You Could Say, It A Nonpractice. I Personally Feel That It's Just As Worthy On A Weekend To Rake The Lawns Of An Elderly Neighbor Or To Climb A Mountain And Marvel At The Beauty Of This Land We Live In As It Is To Sing Hosannas Or Go To Mass. In Other Words, I Think Every Many Finds His Own Church- And Not All Of Them Have Four Walls - Judge Haig (page 399)

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Leather Jackets

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I Found Plain Truth Very Interesting.

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Until This Moment, I Had Not Realized That Someone Could Break Your Heart Twice, Along The Very Same Fault Lines.

He Rises Over Me, A Second Sun, And Fills Me With Light And Heat.

Sometimes I Think My Whole Life Has Been About Holding On To You.

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Words Are Like Nets - We Hope They'll Cover What We Mean, But We Know They Can't Possibly Hold That Much Joy, Or Grief, Or Wonder.

You Can't Look Back - You Just Have To Put The Past Behind You, And Find Something Better In Your Future.

Who I Am, And What I Am Capable Of Doing Has Always Managed To Surprise Me.

I Wish I Could Tell Him I Understand: The Higher You Raise Your Hopes, The Farther You Have To Fall.

As Lacy Waited For Her Turn To Speak On Peter's Behalf, She Thought Back To The First Time She Realized She Could Hate Her Own Child.

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Ross Held Her Face Between His Hands And Kissed Her. He Tasted Doubt On Her Tongue And Pain On The Roof Of Her Mouth. He Swallowed These, And Drank Again. Consumed, She Had No Choice But To See How Empty He Was Inside, And How, Sip By Sip, She Filled Him.

They Say That There Are Moments That Open Up Your Life Like A Walnut Cracked, That Change Your Point Of View So That You Never Look At Things The Same Way Again.

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Sometimes You Can See Things Happen Right In Front Of Your Eyes And Still Jump To The Wrong Conclusions.

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I Wonder If You've Got A Minute." I Have Many Minutes, All Of Them Used Toward A Common Purpose.

I Want To Live," He Said, "so I Have To Die.

Logical Thinking Keeps You From Wasting Time Worrying, Or Hoping. It Prevents Disappointment. Imagination, On The Other Hand, Only Gets You Hyped Up Over Things That Will Never Realistically Happen.

The Damage Was Permanent; There Would Always Be Scars. But Even The Angriest Scars Faded Over Time Until It Was Difficult To See Them Written On The Skin At All, And The Only Thing That Remained Was The Memory Of How Painful It Had Been.

I Will Say Overwhelmingly What Means So Much More To Me Than The Opinion Of One Reviewer Are The Letters I Get From Fans Who Tell Me How A Particular Book Has Changed Their Life.

It's Like Picking Up An Unfamiliar Piece Of Sheet Music & Starting To Stumble Through It, Only To Realize It Is A Melody You'd Once Learned By Heart, One You Can Play Without Even Trying.

Part Of Growing Up Was Learning Not To Be Quite That Honest - Learning When It Was Better To Lie, Rather Than To Hurt Someone With The Truth.

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The First Time She Kissed Me, I Truly Thought I'd Had An Aneurysm - My Pulse Was Thundering So Loud And My Senses Were Exploding. This, I Remember Thinking, The Only Word I Could Hold On To In A Sea Of Feelings.

As A Child, What I Was Missing Was So Much Bigger To Me Than What I Had. My Mother-mythic, Imaginary-was A Deity And A Superhero And A Comfort All At Once. If Only I'd Had Her, Surely, She Would Have Been The Answer To Every Problem; If Only I'd Had Her , She Would Have Been The Cure For Everything That Ever Had Gone Wrong In My Life.

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I Think This Is Every Mother's Worst Nightmare - Something Dreadful Happening To Her Child.

Words Got In The Way. The Things We Felt The Hardest--like What It Was Like To Have A Boy Touch You As If You Were Made Of Light, Or What It Meant To Be The Only Person In The Room Who Wasn't Noticed--weren't Sentences; They Were Knots In The Wood Of Our Bodies, Places Where Our Blood Flowed Backward. If You Asked Me, Not That Anyone Ever Did, The Only Words Worth Saying Were I'm Sorry.

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I Wondered What Happened When You Offered Yourself To Someone, And They Opened You, Only To Discover You Were Not The Gift They Expected And They Had To Smile And Nod And Say Thank You All The Same.

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I Believed The Reason There Was A God Was To Prevent Such Atrocities From Happening To The Same Person Twice. But Nothing Prepared Me For This: I Have Done What I've Sworn I Could Never Do; I Have Become My Own Nightmare... I Have Lost Control.

They Ask, How Could This Happen Here? Well. How Could It Not Happen Here?

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Like A Missing Tooth, Sometimes An Absence Is More Noticeable Than A Presence.

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How Far Can A Person Go... And Still Live With Himself.

It Just Goes To Show You: You Can Put Nine Insane Miles Between You And Another Person. You Can Make A Vow To Never Speak His Name. You Can Surgically Remove Someone From Your Life. And Still, He'll Haunt You.

Suddenly This Is All Too Hard. I Am Tired Of Putting Up Walls. I Want Someone With The Strength - And The Honesty - To Break Them Down.

Maybe Honesty Is Overvalued. What's Truly Priceless Is Picking Out From A Stream Of Falsehoods The Ones You Most Need To Hear.

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When You [lose Someone], It Feels Like The Hole In Your Gum When A Tooth Falls Out. You Can Chew, You Can Eat, You Have Plenty Of Other Teeth, But Your Tongue Keeps Going Back To That Empty Place, Where All Nerves Are Still A Little Raw

There Was A Fine Line Between Love And Hate You Heard That Cliche All The Time. But No One Told You That The Moment You Crossed It Would Be The One You Least Expected. You'd Fall In Love And Crack Open A Secret Door To Let Your Soul Mate In. You Just Never Expected Such Closeness One Day To Feel Like An Intrusion.

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Sometimes, When You Don't Ask Questions, It's Not Because You Are Afraid That Someone Will Lie To Your Face. It's Because You're Afraid They'll Tell You The Truth.

When Your Existence Is Hell, Death Must Be Heaven.

Write A Living Will. And Become An Organ Donor!

There Are Some Things, I Think, You're Btter Off Not Remembering.

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I Think That When You Live In A World With Limits... When You've Met Everyone And Seem Everything You're Going To See - You Lose The Hope That Something Extraordinary Will Happen In Your Life

At 17, The Smallest Crises Took On Tremendous Proportions; Someone Else's Thoughts Could Take Root In The Loam Of Your Own Mind; Having Someone Accept You Was As Vital As Oxygen. Adults, Light Years Away From This, Rolled Their Eyes And Smirked And Said, 'this Too Shall Pass' - As If Adolescence Was A Disease Like Chicken Pox, Something Everyone Recalled As A Milk Nuisance, Completely Forgetting How Painful It Had Been At The Time.

I Sometimes Wonder If It Is Just Me, Or If There Are Other Women Who Figure Out Where They Are Supposed To Be By Going Nowhere.

My Sisters Keeper

It's Because Of Libraries That Books Like Mine Get Recommended To Book Clubs And Avid Readers, Who In Turn Pass Them Onto Others Looking To Be Whisked Away From The World For A Little While...and Perhaps To Learn A Bit About Themselves In The Process.

Many Trees Have Died So That The Catholic Church Can Preach Against Homosexuality.

You Signed No Contract To Become A Parent, But The Responsibilities Were Written In Invisible Ink. There Was A Point When You Had To Support Your Child, Even If No One Else Would. It Was Your Job To Rebuild The Bridge, Even If Your Child Was The One Who Burned It In The First Place.

My First Job Was As An Assistant In The Local Library. Self Fulfilling Prophecy?

You Can Stay Up All Night And Still Not Count All The Ways To Lose The People You Love.

I Shouldn't Have Eavesdropped, But Sometimes, That's The Only Way To Find Out The Truth.

They Don't Really Pay Attention To Me, Except When They Need My Blood Or Something. I Wouldn't Even Be Alive, If It Wasn't For Kate Being Sick.

I'm Weird. Everyone Says So.

Sometimes I Think There's A Beast That Lives Inside Me, In The Cavern That's Where My Heart Should Be, And Every Now And Then It Fills Every Last Inch Of My Skin, So That I Can't Help But Do Something Inappropriate. Its Breath Is Full Of Lies; It Smells Of Spite.

But Love Wasn't About Sacrifice, And It Wasn't About Falling Short Of Someone's Expectations. By Definition, Love Made You Better Than Good Enough; It Redefined Perfection To Include Your Traits, Instead Of Excluding Them. All Any Of Us Wanted, Really, Was To Know That We Counted. That Someone Else's Life Would Not Have Been As Rich Without Us Here.

Leave It To A Man To Mess Things Up

Honey, Kate Is Not Going To Die Sooner Because You Have One More Glass Of Mine, Or Because You Stay Overnight In A Hotel, Or Because You Let Yourself Crack Up At A Bad Joke. So Sit Your Ass Back Down And Turn Up The Volume And Act Like You're A Normal Person.

Doing The Right Thing For Someone Else Occasionally Means Doing Something That Feels Wrong To You.

My Friends Say I Have Two Speeds: Fast And Blistering.

You Can Be Strapped To The Most Stable Chair And Still Feel The World Give Way Beneath You.

Be A Good Listener, Don't Judge And Don't Put Boundaries On Someone Else's Grief.

Hope And Reality Lie In Inverse Proportions, Inside The Walls Of A Hospital... Doubt Is Like Dye. Once Is Spreads Into The Fabric Of Excuses You've Woven, You'll Never Get Rid Of The Stain.

The Music We Listen To May Not Define Who We Are. But It’s A Damn Good Start.

You Can Argue That It's A Different World Now Than The One When Matthew Shepard Was Killed, But There Is A Subtle Difference Between Tolerance And Acceptance. It's The Distance Between Moving Into The Cul-de-sac And Having Your Next Door Neighbor Trust You To Keep An Eye On Her Preschool Daughter For A Few Minutes While She Runs Out To The Post Office. It's The Chasm Between Being Invited To A Colleague's Wedding With Your Same-sex Partner And Being Able To Slow-dance Without The Other Guests Whispering.

This Was Something She Would Keep Hidden Within Herself, Maybe In Place Of The Knot Of Pain And Anger She Had Been Carrying Under Her Breastbone...a Security Blanket, An Ace Up Her Sleeve. She Might Never Use It, But She Would Always Feel Its Presence Like A Swelling Secret Stone, And That Way When She Let Go Of The Rage, She Would Not Feel Nearly As Empty.

I Wondered Why The Head Could Move So Swiftly While The Heart Dragged Its Feet.

I ...understand How A Parent Might Hit A Child- It's Because You Can Look Into Their Eyes And See A Reflection Of Yourself That You Wish You Hadn't.

It Felt Like I'd Been Living Underground, And For A Moment, I'd Been Given This Glimpse Of The Sky. Once You've Seen That, How Can You Go Back Where You Came From?

And He Suddenly Knew That If She Killed Herself, He Would Die. Maybe Not Immediately, Maybe Not With The Same Blinding Rush Of Pain, But It Would Happen. You Couldn't Live For Very Long Without A Heart.

Maybe Mothers - Consciously Or Subconsciously - Repelled Their Daughters In Different Ways.

It Does'nt Matter Who Forgives You, If You're The One Who Can't Forget.

If There Isn’t A Them, There Can’t Be An Us.

I Can't Do This To You,' He Said, Drawing Back. Emily Put Her Hand On His And Pulled The Gun To Her Temple. 'then Do It For Me,' She Said.

If You Tell Yourself You Feel Fine, You Will.

So Much Of Marriage Was Implicit And Nonverbal. Had I Gotten So Complacent I'd Forgotten To Communicate?

It Was So Damn Hard To Find Love In This World, To Locate Someone Who Could Make You Feel That There Was A Reason You'd Been Put On This Earth. A Child, I Imagined, Was The Purest Form Of That. A Child Was The Love You Didn't Have To Look For, Didn't Have To Prove Anything To, Didn't Have To Worry About Losing. Which Is Why, When It Happened, It Hurt So Badly.

After All, How Many Of Us Had Tried To Forget Something Traumatic...only To Find It Printed On The Back Of Our Eyelids, Tattooed On Our Tongues?

Maybe I Was Naïve To Think That Silence Was Implicit Complacence, Instead Of A Festering Question. Maybe I Was Silly To Believe That Friends Owed Each Other Anything.

When You Want Something So Desperately, You Shake With The Need For It. You Tell Yourself That You Don't Need More Than One Sip, Because It's Just The Taste You Crave, And Once It's On Your Tongue You Will Be Able To Make It Last Alifetime. You Dream Of It At Night. You See A Thousand Mile-high Obstacles Between Where You Stand And What You Want, And You Convince Yourself You Have The Power To Hurdle Them. You Tell Yourself This Even When, Leaping The First Block, You Wind Up Bruised And Bloodied And Flattened.

The Only Difference Between A Wish And A Prayer Is That You're At The Mercy Of The Universe For The First, And You've Got Some Help With The Second.

The Act Of Writing... Is The Act Of Trying To Understand Why My Opinion Is What It Is. And Ultimately, I Think That's The Same Experience The Reader Has When They Pick Up One Of My Books.

People Think They Know What They're Getting, And They're Always Wrong.

My Sisters Keeper

How Many Times Would I Throw This Away Before I Realized It Was What I Had Been Looking For All Along?

I Personally Subscribe To The Belief That Normal Is Just A Setting On The Dryer.

A Lie, As You Probably Know, Has A Taste All Its Own. Blocky And Bitter And Never Quite Right.

Do You Know How Sometimes - When You Are Riding Your Bike And You Start Skidding Across Sand, Or When You Miss A Step And Start Tumbling Down The Stairs - You Have Those Long, Long Seconds To Know That You Are Going To Be Hurt, And Badly?

Riding Your Bike

We Could All Be Lucky. We Could All Be What We Want To Be, Instead Of Who Someone Else Told Us To Be.

Africa - You Can See A Sunset And Believe You Have Witnessed The Hand Of God. You Watch The Slope Lope Of A Lioness And Forget To Breathe. You Marvel At The Tripod Of A Giraffe Bent To Water. In Africa, There Are Iridescent Blues On The Wings Of Birds That You Do Not See Anywhere Else In Nature. In Africa, In The Midday Heart, You Can See Blisters In The Atmosphere. When You Are In Africa, You Feel Primordial, Rocked In The Cradle Of The World.

What If It Turns Out That A Life Isn’t Defined By Who You Belong To Or Where You Came From, By What You Wished For Or Whom You’ve Lost, But Instead By The Moments You Spend Getting From Each Of These Places To The Next?

When You Showed Someone How You Felt, It Was Fesh And Honest. Whe You Told Someone How You Felt, There Might Be Nothing Behind The Words But Habit Or Expectation.

But There's An Enormous Difference Between An Audience That's Watching You Because They Can't Wait To See What Comes Next And An Audience That's Watching You Because They're Waiting For You To Fail.

Imagine If You Were The Positive Pole Of A Magnet, And You Were Told That Under No Circumstances Were You Allowed To Touch That Negative Pole That Was Sucking You In Like A Black Hole. Or If You Crawled Out Of The Desert And Found A Woman Standing With A Pitcher Of Ice Water, But She Held It Out Of Your Reach. Imagine Jumping Off A Building, And Then Being Told Not To Fall. That's What It Feels Like To Want A Drink.

Was There A Language Of Loss? Did Everyone Who Suffered Speak A Different Dialect?

There's Always Going To Be Bad Stuff Out There. But Here's The Amazing Thing -- Light Trumps Darkness, Every Time. You Stick A Candle Into The Dark, But You Can't Stick The Dark Into The Light.

Life Was All About Being In A Certain Place, At A Certain Time.

You Might Not Write Well Every Day, But You Can Always Edit A Bad Page. You Can't Edit A Blank Page.

I Believe That Having Something To Hope For - Even If It's Just A Better Tomorrow- Is The Most Powerful Drug On This Planet.

Writing Is Total Grunt Work. A Lot Of People Think It's All About Sitting And Waiting For The Muse. I Don't Buy That. It's A Job. There Are Days When I Really Want To Write, Days When I Don't. Every Day I Sit Down And Write.

Fiction Is Like That, Once It Is Released Into The World: Contagious, Persistent. Like The Contents Of Pandora's Box, A Story That's Freely Given Can't Be Contained Anymore. It Becomes Infectious, Spreading From The Person Who Created It To The Person Who Listens, And Passes It On.

Each Memory Is Like A Paper Flower Stowed Up A Magician's Sleeve: Invisible One Moment And Then So Substantial And Florid The Next I Cannot Imagine How It Stayed Hidden All This Time. And Like Those Paper Flowers, Once They've Been Let Loose In The World, The Memories Are Impossible To Tuck Away Again.

Infatuation's Just Another Word For Not Seeing Clearly. When You Start To Love A Person- That's When They Become Real

What I Mean Is That Those Thoughts, They're Human. And Just Because You Turn Out Differently Than Everyone's Imagined You Would Doesn't Mean That You've Failed In Some Way. A Kid Who Gets Teased In One School Might Move To A Different One, And Be The Most Popular Girl There, Just Because No One Has Any Other Expectations Of Her. Or A Person Who Goes To Med School Because His Entire Family Is Full Of Doctors Might Find Out That What He Really Wants To Be Is An Artist Instead.

A Man Should Live His Life A Certain Way Not Because Of Some Divine Authority, But Because Of A Personal Moral Obligation To Himself And Others.

Objection!" Metz Shouts. Grounds?" The Judge Asks. Well...he's My Witness!

Would You Give Up Your Vengeance Against Someone You Hate If It Meant Saving Someone You Love? Would You Want Your Dreams To Come True If It Meant Granting Your Enemy's Dying Wish?

I'd Like To Say That This Time I'd Kill Myself Too..but I've Never Had That Kind Of Courage.

...because He Believed That If You Wanted To Get Rid Of A Hole, You Filled It. He Had Not Realized At The Time That There Were All Sorts Of Filler That Took Up Space, But Had No Substance. That Made You Feel Just As Empty.

There's Something Nice About Knowing That I'm Not The Only One Who Doesn't Quite Fit The Part.

The Reason I Am Still Sitting At Josef's Kitchen Table Is The Same Reason Traffic Slows After A Car Wreck- You Want To See The Damage; You Can't Let Yourself Pass Without That Mental Snapshot. We Are Drawn To Horror Even As We Recoil From It.

To Say There Had Been A Loss Was Ludicrous; One Lost A Shoe Or A Set Of Keys. You Did Not Suffer The Death Of A Child And Say There Was A Loss. There Was A Catastrophe. A Devastation. A Hell.

The Doctors May Be Mapping Out The War Games, But It Is The Nurses Who Make The Conflict Bearable.

I Consider Myself Spiritual And I'm Married To A Man Who Is Both An Atheist And A Humanist, And My Kids Have Been Raised With The Traditions Of Different Religions, But They Do Not Go To Church Or Temple. My Feeling Is That Everyone Should Be Able To Believe What They Want Or Need To Believe.

It's Crazy, Right? To Love Someone Who's Hurt You? It's Even Crazier To Think That Someone Who Hurts You Loves You.

I Have Always Envied People Who Believe Strongly In Religion, People Who Could Face A Tragedy By Praying And Know That It Would Be All Right. As Unscientific As It Seems, Well, It Would Be Nice To Lay The Responsibilities And Pain On Someone Else's Larger Shoulders.

Peter Curled His Hands Into Fists At His Sides. 'kiss Me,' He Said. She Leaned Towards Him Slowly, Until Her Face Was Too Close To Be In Focus. Her Hair Fell Over Peter's Shoulder Like A Curtain And Her Eyes Closed. She Smelled Like Autumn-like Apple Cider And Slanting Sun And The Snap Of The Coming Cold. He Felt His Heart Scrambling, Caught Inside The Confines Of His Own Body. Josie's Lips Landed Just On The Edge Of His, Almost His Cheek And Not Quite His Mouth. 'i'm Glad I Wasn't Stuck In Here Alone,' She Said Shyly, And He Tasted The Words, Sweet As Mint On Her Breath.

Envy, After All, Comes From Wanting Something That Isn't Yours. But Grief Comes From Losing Something You've Already Had.

In Half Hour My Mother Has Managed To Give Me What My Father Couldn't: My Past.

Is It Really Worth Dying For The Person You Love?

That’s What Religion Does. It Points A Finger. It Causes Wars. It Breaks Apart Countries. It’s A Petri Dish For Stereotypes To Grow In. Religion’s Not About Being Holy...just Holier-than-thous.

Then Henry Speaks Again. "did He Do It?" I Turn To Him Slowly. "does It Matter?

It's The Child Who's Supposed To Cry, And The Mom Who Makes It All Better, Not The Other Way Around, Which Is Why Mothers Will Move Heaven And Earth To Hold It Together In Front Of Their Own Kids.

Dylan Jerome," The Lawyer Admits, "wanted To Sue God For Not Caring Enough About Him.

Some Women Are Meant To Change The World, While Others Are Meant To Hold It Together. And Then There Are Those Of Us Who Simply Don't Want To Be In It, Because We Know No Matter How Much We Struggle, We Can't Comfortably Fit.

My Mother Used To Tell Me That When Push Comes To Shove, You Always Know Who To Turn To. That Being A Family Isn't A Social Construct But An Instinct.

Writer's Block Is For People Who Have The Luxury Of Time.

Polar North Can't Get Away From A Magnet; The Magnet Finds It, No Matter What.

The Saddest Day In The World Will Be The One When She Stops Pretending.

It Was Nice Not Having To Be The One In Control, For A Little While. It Was Nice To Be The One Who Was Protected, Instead Of The One Who'd Been Protecting Eveyone Else.

People Don’t Just Disappear. There’s Always A Reason, Or An Enemy With A Grudge. There’s Always A Loose Thread That Starts To Unravel.

And Another Claimed It Was Inherited Through A Parent Who Was A Carrier Of The Defective Gene. I Had Always Assumed The Latter Was The Case With Claire. After All, Surely A Child Who Grew Out Of Grief Would Be Born With A Heavy Heart.

But Still, It Looked Completely Natural, As If We Had Been Kissing At The Ends Of Sentences For Ages, While The Rest Of The World Was Still Hung Up On Punctuation.

Your Hand Fits Mine Like The Last Piece Of A Jigsaw Puzzle

She Stares At Me For A Moment, And Then She Bursts Out Laughing. “you Haven’t Seen His Perfect Little Wife And His Perfect Little Girls. Believe Me, Oliver, I’m Not The Great Love Of His Life, The One He’ll Never Forget.” “you Are To Me,” I Say.

I Can Give Or Take Elephants; I Never Can Find The Cheetah-but The Zebras Captivate Me. They'd Be One Of The Few Things That Would Fit If We Were Lucky Enough To Live In A World That's Black Or White.

When It's All Over, You're Remembered For What You Did, Not What You Said You Were Going To Do.

Raw Love, Like Raw Heartache, Could Blindside You.

You Can Fool Yourself, You Know. You'd Think It's Impossible, But It Turns Out It's The Easiest Thing Of All.

When She Smiles, It Feels Like The First Warm Day Of March-- After An Eternity Of Snow, When You Suddenly Remember How Summer Feels On The Backs Of Your Bare Calves & In The Part Of Your Hair.

If You Spent Your Life Concentrating On What Everyone Else Thought Of You, Would You Forget Who You Really Were? What If The Face You Showed The World Turned Out To Be A Mask... With Nothing Beneath It?

It's Disappointing To Know That Someone Can See Right Through You.

I Think My Writing Has Become "cleaner."

The Way I Challenge Myself Is By Writing Something That Really Engages Me, That Doesn't Have An Easy Answer, And Isn't Always An Easy Book To Write.

And I Remembered Something Else That Makes Us Human: Faith, The Only Weapon In Our Arsenal To Battle Doubt.

Maybe A Mother Wasn't What She Seemed To Be On The Surface.

Suddenly, I Don't Want To Be This Person Anymore. I Don't Want To Pretend I'm Fooling The World When I'm Not. I Want Someone Else To Have A Plan For Me, Because I'm Not Doing A Very Good Job Myself.

The Cost Of Growth Is Always A Small Act Of Violence.

An Item That Looks Perfectly Normal On The Surface Might Only Be Disguised.

Perfectly Normal

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