I marvel at how good I was before I met him, how I lived molded to the smallest space possible, my days the size of little beads that passed without passion through my fingers. So few people know what they're capable of. At forty-two I'd never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem - my chronic inability to astonish myself.

So I taught Sunday school and brought dishes to all manner of potlucks and tried to adjust the things I heard from the pulpit to my increasingly incongruent faith.

Most people don't have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don't know anything about.

I realize that I can be with someone, but on a deeper level I'm not available to them at all. I have attention deficit disorder of the soul.

If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.

I felt someone should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one & say, we are sorry, but something strong & lasting had to do this for May, & you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.

You've got to figure out which end of the needle you're gon' be, the one that's fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth.