I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.

When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.

I was beginning to understand.My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things;that was why everything had to be perfect.

Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.

The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can't even see it, shifting in the dark.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.