And while some healing does happen, it isn't a healing of redemption or epiphany. It's more like the slow absorption of a bruise.

- Joan Wickersham

But who is ever able to apply to her own current love affair a word like "similar"?

- Joan Wickersham

There is also something deeply lovely about uncertainty: the possibility of optimism.

- Joan Wickersham

A love story - your own, or anyone else's - is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined. It is all dreams and invention. …

- Joan Wickersham

[On suicide:] It's the only cause of death that can be used as a noun to describe the dead person. If you die of cancer you are not called 'a cancer.…

- Joan Wickersham

The word "miss" is so wistful. As is the word "wistful," for that matter. They both have sighs embedded in them, that "iss" sound. Which also sounds …

- Joan Wickersham