This world can only give me reminders of what I don't have, can never have, didn't have for long enough.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

Believe it or not, Marshal, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills. I have this radical idea that if you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he's trying to tell you, you just might reach him. (87)

Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda’s voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it’s indelibly her own.

Everyone sees different things.

He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.