Was it always to be like this? she wondered. A moment of joy followed by a new sorrow?

But things change, people change, Gaby. Otherwise what would be the point of living?

Well, memory can play tricks. Most people, I think, tend to remember the good rather than the bad when someone close to them dies.

The end came as dusk fell on a gloomy winter day of cold rain.

I'm like my mother, she thought, I search my joy for signs of sorrow ahead.

Death wasn't a movie where the pretty star faded away with a touch of pale makeup and every hair in place.

It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.

Our reality is a blend of the impossible becoming possible.

There is no failure in life, there are only those who don't know how to succeed.

The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.

The biggest challenge is the chaos of parenthood, which has honestly been such a welcome challenge - bring it on, I say!

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

On a day when you're not feeling so good, you put on a happy face, it's infectious - these things sound kind of corny and stupid, but this is our life.