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

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.

The irrational thoughts were the ones with the power to burn holes in your gut.

People blush when one of their core truths is revealed.

What about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?

I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow.

...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)