Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you, you won't get your mitts on the kid as often.

I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.

But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

I could become like that dyslexic agnostic in the old joke - the one who lies in bed and tries to figure out if his dog exists.