[...] so important to believe in a concept of goodness, even if we make it up ourselves. We don't really make it up. it's there, isn't it?" "Oh, yes, it's there," she said. "It's there because we put it there.

And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.

Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.

When we talk about our lives, long or short, brief and tragic or enduring beyond comprehension, we impose a continuity on them, and that continuity is a lie.

What I have always wanted more than revenge is to bring the other person to recognition of the pain they caused, so they essentially say, "I will never do that again."

Obviously, a writer can't know everything about what she writes. It's impossible.

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.