Sleep. It’s like sex. You know it’s good, but you don’t know just how good until you’re not getting any.

The stars, he said, were actually souls, all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.

When the tears were gone I washed my face and walked back to the store to finish my shopping. Because even when your heart is breaking you still need bread and Rice Krispies and orange juice.

I wanted to tell her to never change, to never let her heart get trampled down and hard. But she’d remember that, too. And right now she didn’t know that there was any other way to be. That her heart, her soul, could ever be anything other than soft and lovely and fertile. And she needed to stay that way as long as she could.