Quotes from Barbara Delinsky

quiet meant you could hear the gulls, the cormorants, the wind, and the waves. Those things brought him calm.

She wasn't supposed—to die until—we talked.

turned off the BlackBerry before James could text back. I might hate electronic wizardry, but it was my ally now. I could use it or not, could respond to James or not, and with my calls simply showing "New York" on his caller ID, he had no idea where I was.

At last they reached Wild River. "This is it?" Bill gawked in dismay. Jordanna joined the men to stare at the dark bed of mossy rocks. "It is wild, isn't it?" she quipped, surprising herself with her own good humor when her shoulders, her back, her legs ached.

It was the women's movement that did it, told us we could be everything, but we can't. We can't be mothers and wives at the same time that we're professors. It just doesn't work. Someone always gets gypped.

the giver of comfort, not the recipient.

they had talked about bad things happening to good people. Joyce hadn't accepted it then, any more than she was accepting it now.

The garden was a black hole when it came to negative thoughts, sucking them right in, making them vanish.

Blaming the wine would have been taking the easy way out. Annie refused to do that. Rather, she buttoned her blouse with raggedy fingers and said, "I was thinking of my husband. That's the problem. I was using you, but you shouldn't be a stand-in for someone else. You deserve more.

She's my mother. I'm not sure you get the same kind of unconditional love in your life from anyone but a mother.

There were ones with garden supplies and ones with health supplies, but neither offered anything remotely appropriate. There

Emptiness did that to a person. Her insides were a big black hole where dreams of her mother had been.

poured himself into his work

Recalling "Love Games," she returned to the present with a jolt and glanced at the set in time to find the show over for the day. She'd missed it!

Solía decir que algunas personas no eran capaces de distinguir y encontrar las perlas entre la arena, o únicamente tenían la fuerza de carácter para quitar la arena de unas cuantas perlas y terminaban sólo con una gargantilla.

The family oddball

Remember my mother—how much she suffered before she died, how thin and gray she seemed after so much surgery? I don't picture her that way anymore. I picture her as she was before she got sick.

Thanks to the Betamax and Jason's diligent collection of tapes, she'd even been able to rerun the shows she'd missed while in Haiti. It was her job, she reasoned. And now she'd blown it!

Loving herself—respecting her own needs—was something important and new.

Are you still teaching?

returned to the typewriter, angrily erasing and correcting each mistake she'd made, desperately wishing she could as easily wipe out her mental image of the man in her carriage house.

No, I don't need to do this, she thought. This isn't what I want. I want my mother. The thought startled her, but she couldn't shake it. She wanted Marjorie—wanted to pour out her heart and cry in the arms of the one person whose job it was to listen. It didn't matter how old or how independent Kathryn was. She needed her mother.

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. Then, as Paul said, something happens

clients. They're always there. You do have to worry, and look at the practice you've built. Give me a rundown on today's list." Casey could count on Brianna to boost her morale. "Two phobias, the low self-esteem, three adjustment disorders, and one panic attack.