He says he is starting a school here, and not just any school, but “the best of the best.” He tells Signora Divino, his neighbor, “We will bring all the children from all over the world and we will live in harmony!” Is he kidding?

I cannot just write a frivolous book, a la-di-da book. Everything isn’t la-di-da. There is something that’s going to pull you up short. I want to reassure young readers. I want to comfort them, to not fear the unexpected.

She was my mother, and she was part of me.

Do the other angels know what they are doing? Am I the only confused one? Maybe I am unfinished, an unfinished angel.

Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: ‘What is real? What is truth?’ They have to learn it; they don’t automatically know it. To them, it’s a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.

Then I thought, boy, isn’t that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.

It can’t be dead. It was alive just a minute ago.

Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing – and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.

On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora’s box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.

I am still jealous that Phoebe’s mother came back and mine did not. I miss my mother.