Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.

I can see how the authorities could not like Todd [ Willingham], because he's not a person who is going to give you respect if you don't deserve it just because you say something.

I like it when science and devotion find places of intersection.

I've read that under trauma, that you have this ability to kind of disconnect from the experience.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness

My husband is not American. He was born in Brazil, where he grew up under a filthy, corrupt dictatorship. In his twenties, he moved to Europe, where he lived for a while under various socialist democracies. He spent a few years on a kibbutz in Israel, living out a utopian experiment in communal existence.