You must never check for a person's pulse using your thumb, or you'll feel your own heartbeat. Actually, I plan on doing that if I'm the one who's here when Ruth dies. I plan on giving her my heartbeat before I let her go.

Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything.

But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.

Ruth has friends like other people have wardrobes. I mean that there's someone for every occasion.

My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place.

As a writer, you should have a sticky soul; the act of continually taking things in should be as much a part of you as your hair color.

I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.