I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.

Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty.

No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.

Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.