One day I will have to forgive life for ending, I tell myself. I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality ... just be what it is.

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

I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.

What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.

We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.

When he spoke, the roughness was gone from his voice. "I could tell you I did it. That's what you wanna hear. I could tell you she did it to herself, but both ways I'd be lying. It was you who did it, Lily. You didn't mean it, but it was you.

You gotta imagine what's never been.