I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.

I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.

Pastor Veronica told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, straining. a warhorse walks up to it, and says, 'What on earth are you doing?' The sparrow replies, 'I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help.'The warhorse sneers-- 'Do you really think you're going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?' And the sparrow says, 'One does what one can.'

I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.

I am going to notice the lights of the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, the lights of our candles as we march, the lights with which spring teases us, the light that is already present.

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.