Quotes from Barbara Delinsky

one of the worst things about electronic communication. Lacking facial expression, tone of voice, or context, words could be taken any number of ways. With only one cryptic word now, I was discouraged.

When we don't have something in our lives, we tell ourselves that we don't need it, that we don't want it—because the alternative is aching for it, which breeds a sense of loss. So, we remove it from the picture we make of our lives. What we don't see, we don't miss.

Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work—and what to do when they break.

You have a fuchsia heart. And a fuchsia heart doesn't die, it simply bides its time, taking a backseat to pragmatism, all while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence, teal gables, turquoise earrings, and saffron scarves.

What made a friend a best friend? Did it have to be someone who knew your people, who shared your life outlook or your views on religion or politics? Could it just be someone who could talk and listen and commiserate?

But wasn't a best friend also someone you could trust not to hurt you? I had hurt Vicki, yet here she was, opening her home and heart to me again. So maybe being a best friend entailed the ability to forgive.

She thought about this. She had analyzed it in depth. When you live alone, travel alone, exist solely on the outskirts of other people's lives, you do have time to wonder why what you want most in life is out of reach. You also have the time to tell yourself that you don't want it at all, though whether you can ever be completely convinced is something else.

Love was such a complex emotion, so overpowering and all-consuming. Love conquered all, the old saying went.

For in the giving she received. It was what their love was all about.

I love crowds. They make me feel part of something big and important.

Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.

tall, dark-haired guy

Because life isn't static," he says. "It keeps changing. We think we know where we are, then something happens and we're somewhere else, and we have to find our way all over again.

She distracted him by pulling her gift for him out from under the bed. It was two-tiered and beautifully wrapped, with an exquisite card she had made herself—she was an artist, after all. He read the message inside, felt a catch in

June would always be Charlotte's favorite month on Quinnipeague. She loved the frothy roil of the sea as it recovered from a day of rain, and in those early mornings, before the fog lifted and sun warmed the island, there was nothing, nothing better than a wood fire, wool socks, and hot chocolate made from scratch.

who will be calling her Mommy before long." She took a deep

out. He watched her when they were at Kate's tennis

Putting an elbow on the drafting table and her chin in her palm, she simply looked at him. She wasn't angry. To the contrary. She had her lips pressed together; she was clearly trying not to smile—and he loved this about her, this good nature. Of course, that didn't solve his current problem. "You think this is funny?" he asked. "Actually," the corner of her mouth

Tom was not. "Seems to me," he said, "that she's at her drawing board evenings more than she's watching TV, and that you're the one who uses the sitting room for

the scent in the barn unexpectedly pleasant, what with those little bursts of chrysanthemum extract and rosemary oil to keep the flies at bay.

No, Jack Ramsey didn't look like a spa person. He lifted weights. Tom couldn't imagine him in an aerobics class, much less wrapped in seaweed.

She turned the water on again, rinsed a dish, put it in the dishwasher. "I know you didn't have jewelry." She listened. "Yes, Mother, other women would love what I have, but that's not the point. The point is that a gift lacks something if I have to dictate exactly

Falling short of self-destructive, her apathy toward the potential hazard was, given her internal upheaval, not unusual. Only later would she look back on her attitude as irresponsible; only later would she understand that she must have wanted something, anything to happen, to prove to herself that some part of her was still alive.

Whether she was writing to tell her followers about a local cheesemaker, a new farm-to-table restaurant, or what to do with an exotic heirloom fruit that was organically produced and newly marketed, she spent hours each day scouring Philadelphia and the outlying towns for material.