Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town

For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.

Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.