People react predictably, especially when they don't have time to think.

We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war.

Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.

...the horrific fact that our lives and those of the people we love are impermanent and exquisitely fragile, that any of us can cease to exist without warning, that loving anyone, anywhere, at any time, leaves you infinitely vulnerable at every single moment. (20)

Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay.

I think men should be able to veto women's abortions if they're willing to care for the child after it's born.

The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.