The most important thing to remember about depression is this: you do not get the time back. It is not tacked on at the end of your life to make up for the disaster years. Whatever time is eaten by a depression is gone forever. The minutes that are ticking by as you experience the illness are minutes you will not know again.

It is easy to keep secrets by being honest in an ironic tone of voice.

It seems particularly ironic that a church that at one stage, a long time ago, fought to redefine marriage should now be so opposed to these attempts to redefine marriage.

Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.

I know one gay ex-Mormon who is a talented, self-destructive alcoholic. Whenever he is drunk and going on a tear, we are back to the Mormon Church and his being thrown out of the Mormon Church and growing up with this sense of being evil.

I understand perfectly well why the Catholic Church preaches against abortion. But it shouldn't be the purpose of the Catholic Church to prevent non-Catholics from having abortions if they feel that abortions are morally acceptable. They can certainly only argue for what they believe to be right in the court of public opinion and try to persuade people.

I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.