To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.

I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.

...Grandpa's mind had left us, gone wild and wary. When I walked with him I could feel how strange it was. His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my own words like baits and lures.

When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherished.

There are ways of being abandoned even when your parents are right there.

I did not choose solitude. Who would? It came on me like a kind of vocation, demanding an effort that married women can't picture.

A woman's body is the gate to this life. A man's body is the gate to the next life.