She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn't.

Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?

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.

The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.

Children model the behavior of adults, on whatever scale is available to them. Ours are growing up in a nation whose most important, influential men - from presidents to the coolest film characters - solve problems by killing people. ... We have taught our children in a thousand ways, sometimes with flag-waving and sometimes with a laugh track, that the bad guy deserves to die.

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.