Life is precious, so I ought to spend my days, you know, making sandwiches for homeless people and tending to the elderly in hospice care. Life is precious, so I should give everything away, except that I live in the world. And in the world, I actually have needs and wants, and I value my needs and wants. And I live in the world, and I can't just go make sandwiches every day because I also have to take kids to school. I also have to, you know, write books because that's my livelihood.

I felt it very moving to feel his touch, and to remember that hands can also show love.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words.

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.

She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes

Factory farming, of course, does not cause all the world's problems, but is is remarkable just how many of them intersect there.