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

A jealous husband is an ugly thing.

God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.

...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)

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

What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?