You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.

I know you've run away - everybody gets the urge to do that some time - but sooner or later you'll want to go home.

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.

In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.

When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

It's always been my hope that I would write a story that would inspire and would connect with people in a way that would touch hearts.