My mother used to tell me when I went somewhere, "Please leave your foolishness at home." But how could I do that? It was stuck on me.

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.

A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.

It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.

I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.