Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now

My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period.

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.

You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home

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.

Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.

the redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.