All the things we don’t say, all the words we swallow, and it makes nothing but trouble.

Sometimes change came all at once, with a sound like a fire taking hold of dry wood and paper, with a roar that rose around you so you couldn't hear yourself think. And then, when the roar died down, even when the fires were damped, everything was different.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.

My sister is a public school teacher. She makes far far less money than I do, and gets almost no public attention for her work. Yet I believe what she does is infinitely more important and more difficult than what I do.

Women are the glue that holds our day-to-day world together.

being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.