I stopped going to mass, and boy, it was painful for me, and it was certainly painful for my family, but I just couldn't ratify their behavior and their decisions anymore by showing up on Sundays.

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.

We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver--that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.

Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: It happens again every single morning.

There's no greater happiness than doing something every day that you love, that you feel you do in a satisfactory fashion, and which both supports and gives you time to support your family. I felt so lucky to have all that.