Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?

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

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.

Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.