I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that.

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

You can’t kill history. You can’t shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that—if it’s going to die, it has to die on its own

Where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Nokes demanded…. “What do you have for directions?” And Dad… said, “I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen