It's easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it. ... Stopping is a spiritual act. It is the refuge where we drink life in.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.

Were all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all.

Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.

I'd forgotten how that sort of craving felt, how it rose suddenly and loudly from the pit of my stomach like a flock of startle birds, then floated back down in the slow, beguiling way of feathers.

Gazing into the mirror, I saw myself as I was-a black silhouette in the room, a woman whose darkness had completely leaked through.