Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss.

I don't get why prom is like a mini-wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.

But, dear God, don't listen to me. I'm an old lady in the middle of nowhere without a real toilet.

It's shocking the things we call love.

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.

Maybe love, too, is beautiful because it has a wildness that cannot be tamed. I don't know. All I know is that passion can take you up like a house of cards in a tornado, leaving destruction in its wake. Or it can let you alone because you've built a stone wall against it, set out the armed guards to keep it from touching you. The real trick is not to let it in, but to hold on. To understand that the heart is as wide and vast as the universe, but that we come to know it best from here, this place is gravity and stability, where out feet can still touch ground.

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.