"After a few more minutes of daydreaming about how fabulous I could become, I look down at the heading on my paper: Janey's Reinvention Plan. It appears lonely at the top of the page. I should probably add some bullets beneath, but I've never been much of a list maker."

"Death changes us, the living. In the presence of death, we become more aware of life.... It can inspire us to decide what really matters in life--and then to seek it. (Founder of M.A.D.D.)."

"Life is an extraordinary gift some people appear not to appreciate. In every breath and scent, every touch and sight we are gifted by new experience and the chance to feel the richness of experience. Every sound we hear, from the song of a bird to the harshness of an angry voice, is a miracle."

"For grief has always been so dear to you that you would make me writhing in pain in the brothel of your imaginations than to be playing with a bunch of balloons in the yard where I should have been.'And may be that's why, you'd rather talk to me about this, than to write a story about me where I could live happily."

"There's a time in your life when you have to stop looking back and start looking forward because otherwise you're going to walk down the road one day and bump into a lamppost. But it's not easy."

"New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture - even the local superstitions. It's a sensory experience on all levels and there's a story lurking around every corner."

"It waited for her. Standing resolute in the moonlight, it had stood for a hundred years. Yet it waited just for her. Shadows passed across the moon, a cool breeze ruffled the leaves around it. Yet still it waited for her. Ancient tombs glowed in shimmery moonlight, row upon row of cold silent witnesses."