People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through and it really helps you out.

I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.

In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief and they really need to be treated for depression.

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no subsitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness... It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.