Sometimes people aren’t nice,′ I began. ‘Then why are you always telling me to be nice?’ Because someone has to break the cycle. Kindness can be contagious. And it has to start somewhere, right?

I think our hopes are made when we are young, and we can never adjust them to the real world.

Mom’s got this secret fear that if you don’t control your life, if you don’t control your man, he will eventually destroy you.

Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by.

We – editors, writers, teachers, publishers – need to do whatever we can to enliven readers, to help create communities for them if we want to continue to have readers at all. Our independent bookstores are the front lines, and many booksellers are fighting the good fight. Here, books stimulate conversation. Conversation stimulates a sense of community. Listening happens. Thinking. The exchange of thoughts.

But what happens if and when writers begin to outnumber readers? What happens when writing becomes more attractive than reading? Will we become – or are we already – a nation of performers with no audience?

The daylight, he remembered, was a sort of medicine. Truly nothing was as acute or upsetting in the first light of day.

Sometimes people aren't nice,' I began. 'Then why are you always telling me to be nice?' Because someone has to break the cycle. Kindness can be contagious. And it has to start somewhere, right?