The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

How often do we do that, he wondered--look at someone and fail to see what's really there?

It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.

So few people know what they're capable of.

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

Regrets don't help anything.