Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.

Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we own it, and women have really been in those quieter moments at the edge of history. But, really, they're the ones who are turning the cogs and the wheels and allowing things like the peace process to happen.

I want the younger writer to know that she or he is meaningful, that what they have to say is powerful in this world. But they can't come indoors, they can't close the curtains, they can't, like, lock themselves away from the world and say nothing.

She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.

I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year!

Every man with his own peculiar vice. His will hardly rock heaven or hell.

I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.