Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?

God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

Hallie and I... were all there was. The image in the mirror that proves you are still here. We had exactly one sister apiece. We grew up knowing the simple arithmetic of scarcity: A sister is more precious than an eye.

You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.