The water was pure and cold and came out of the Apennines tasting like snow melted in the hands of a pretty girl.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

Some things don’t mix. Some things don’t mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.

The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it.

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.