The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it.

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.

When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.