There are these people who keep taking you in and feeding you and loving you and making the world a tiny bit safer than it feels. People have community and family, but existentially we are deeply isolated.

Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.

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

We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn't, they would get a new one.

One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can't.

He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu.