I love you. The meeting ran late. I want a divorce.One little word, one casual lie, one devastating announcement--and our lives are turned upside down forever. InHe SaidWhat?,twenty-six gifted women writers share profoundly personal moments in which a man in their life said something--good or bad--that changed them irrevocably. Joyce Maynard reveals the profound humiliation and trauma she suffered when, after dropping out of Yale to move in with J.D. Salinger at just 18, he suddenly ordered her to pack her bags and leave.

Best-selling author Pam Houston discloses the story of a former lover: a poet who was secretly penning his stanzas for another woman; and novelist Connie May Fowler writes about a trusted friend--and what he whispered while he was attacking her in the middle of the night. With additional contributions from Dr. Margot Duxler, Beverly Donofrio, Sherry Glaser, Abby Frucht, Diana Abu-Jaber, Jane Ganahl, Christine Kehl O'Hagan, Meg Waite Clayton, Susanne Dunlap, Caroline Leavitt, and Ellen Sussman, this is a beautifully-penned, intimate collection of stories about the powerful impact that the right--or the wrong--words can have on a person's life.