Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose

Too many good things all seem the same after a while.

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.