every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions — electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us… When we cease all argument and debate — both internal and external — our true questions can be heard and answered…That is the gathering of magic.

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

I was just really appalled, and I really kept quiet until I saw the governor [Rick Perry] get on and repeat the same words that the prosecution had used in the penalty phase: that he [Todd Willingham] was a monster. And that got me to get on to the computer and connect with some of the media and say: "I have his letters. He wasn't a monster. He was a caring individual." Let them see another side.