My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.

I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.

I'm interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or 'explains,' the larger mysteries of religion.

I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability.

Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I'd said that, how many times I'd meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.

Being with him was like being alone underwater - everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.