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

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.

I would seriously rather be in a long line at the DMV than eat with people I don't know.

Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.