I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.

And at this moment in history, our core value happens to be the raw, aching truth of the human predicament. It may also be the only belief that can save us as a species. A species that will continue to find comfort and delight in the companionship of animals, the miracle of birds, the colours of the corals and the majesty of the forests. We are in it together, on this blue spinning marble in the cold and silent void. And we must act on that belief, if we are going to be able to continue to live a good life here, in this beautiful and fragile country, on this lovely planet, our only home.

My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal.

God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.

You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages.