Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.

At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.

I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.