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

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

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.

Then I repeated these words to my spirits: 'Leave me be; give me peace; and let me do the work of my life. I will never forget you.' Something about that incantation was particularly appealing to me. 'I will never forget you'-- as though one had to address the pride of the spirits, as though one wanted them to feel good about being exorcised.

The campaign against polygamy, around which a lot of anti-Mormon sentiment was organized, seems horrific to me.

I think a lot of the time people assume that their values are universal. And they don't understand which aspects of their values are actually universal and which aspects are very specific.

It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.