On Folly Beach

Mama?" "Yes, Emmy." She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?" Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable.

Sometimes, just when we think we can see our lives on course and we can settle back and get comfortable, a new path opens. Some people just keep going, too scared to veer off the familiar path. But others, well, they step off into the unknown, and find that maybe that was where they were supposed to be all along.

I think worrying is a lot like chewing gum. Eventually it runs out of taste, and you've got to spit it out.

that would be a lot like planting a rose in the desert; you’d survive but you’d never really bloom.

He paused as if waiting for her to say something, but all she could do was stare at him and wonder why he couldn't see that she was a ghost and not really there at all.