That's all my grandfather was guilty of, fear, faith in his words, but that was a high crime in her eyes. That's all Jack was guilty of that day, but I've lived with him a good while and I believe I understand him. Sometimes it might take an afternoon or evening of being here in this kitchen alone, thinking, but I can usually come to see his reasons through his ways. And half the job of finding peace is finding understanding. Don't you believe it to be so?

It took me a long time to learn that mistakes aren't good or bad, they're just mistakes, and you clean them up and go on.

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.

You see if you tell yourself the same tale over and over again enough times then the tellings become separate stories and you will generally fool yourself into forgetting you started with one solitary season out of your life.

Mothers smell blood before the wound is given. We see the rent place on the child's arm before the arrow strikes.

I read about writers' lives with the fascination of one slowing down to get a good look at an automobile accident.

I am a great believer in variations on the routine.