When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.

Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease.

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.

I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.