Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray.

It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other's houseplants - these things amaze me.

Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.

In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity.

The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.