We accumulate pain, collect it. ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?"

We accumulate pain, collect it. ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?"

Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.

Some people are born empty. All manner of good deeds and patience and loving kindness can't even begin to fill them up.

most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.

We believed the fairy tales we told our children and we loved them beyond reason even when we were green and bungling about it. We were children loving our children. And that's who we are still.

Take my hand and grow young with me. Don't rush. Don't sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.