If I had to give up my life for anything, it would have to have the resilience of hope, the elation of new literacy, the brilliant life of a field of flowers, the elementary kindness of bread. Nothing short of that. It would have to be something as sure as love.

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.

Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.

If it's important, your heart remembers.