Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.

I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

He needs to go rub his soul against life.