So all I'm saying is, everything that seems important--our quarrels, or philosophical differences--in the end, it doesn't matter much. You know? In the end, what matters is what remains.

Liquor is the kiss of the angels as well as the curse of the devil. It can conceal but also can reveal

Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out.

She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure.

And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist.

Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.

The Forty Rules of Love is a wise, joyous page-turner... and one that speaks urgently to our war-ravaged times.