I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens like one of those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always seems to happen in community.

We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.

I do for myself exactly what I would do for you - make a lovely cup of tea, or a hot bath, or go buy myself a fabulous pair of socks. I believe that you take the action, and THEN the insight follows - I do loving things for me, stroke my own shoulder, put myself down for a short nap, and the insight follows: that I am a wild precious woman, a human merely being, as e e cummings put it, deserving of respect, tenderness, protection, delight, and solidarity. And that is what Home looks like for me now.

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