Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned.

There are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world.

I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

The apple . . . came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at least three years because that's how long it takes for a new tree to bear fruit.

The reason I am still sitting at Josef's kitchen table is the same reason traffic slows after a car wreck- you want to see the damage; you can't let yourself pass without that mental snapshot. We are drawn to horror even as we recoil from it.

Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?

The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.