Love rarely waits for permission.

You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.

You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all.

Family is a transitive property.

I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens.