She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.

It's all a big old chain. There isn't one unconnected link.

This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer.

My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way.

From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.

We all need people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.