God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.

Because I know something that you don't know. I know that this is the worst experience of your life, but I also know that someday you'll move past it and you'll be fine. And helping somebody likej you through the worst experience of her life is incredibly gratifying.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

I am determined to make the most of this life that I have, damn it - it's that kind of stubbornness I think we all need more of.

The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.