...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.

The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us.

Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.

People who read Anne Lamott, like people who read Anne Rice, believe that tragedy is romantic, but the people who read Anne Lamott believe it ironically.

I always try to stay as quiet as possible about a book until it's finished.

I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.