Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

Life should always be like this. ... Like lingering over a good meal.

What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest?

I think that Oprah's on a mission to improve the lives of the average American in various ways. And one of them is to bring literature to people who would normally not be quite as demanding in their reading tastes, to show them writing that can be more than just entertainment.

...I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them and then changed their minds.

He reminded me of someone who put your fingers in the door and smiled and talked to you while he smashed them.

The stupid things you say in the rain, that can't ever be washed away.