I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone.

I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.