I'm just like this. I have no talent for choosing my battles. Life seems, strangely, like a battle to me. The whole thing.

I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.

Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.

How much more courage it took to be kind than to be cruel.

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.