God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real.

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

Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.

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

I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.