I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other.

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life.

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

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