I believe friends enclose us, like a pair of parentheses. Each one knows us differently, each sustains us in a different way.

You know how a river goes on and on? That's my love for you.

Imagine music gushing down the hollow places in your bones, and making you liquid, and giving you speed. Imagine music turning your body into a song.

Nothing erodes [a mother's love]. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth.

Nature is not the number-one mystery, I’ve learned. It’s the heart that takes top honors.

Here’s another change I’ve noticed: The dark is more than the sun dropping off, more than the moon and the stars. It’s what you can’t see that you hope you will see, what hasn’t been that might be.

In high school, my desire for friendship far outweighed my talent for it.