“It is possible to make family any way you like. It is possible to love men without rage. There are thousands of ways to love men.”

“Leslie Marmon Silko whispers the story is long. No, longer. Longer than that even. Longer than anything. With Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath drink at the bar. Laugh the dark laughter in the dark ligh...”

“But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics - mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers - their massive breasts and guts reminding you ho...”

“Words carry oceans on their small backs.”

“I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldnt let me. Some d...”

“We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.”

“once sailed neither the ship nor the shore ever remains the same again.”

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

“You will be a different person after the storm, because the storm will heal you from your perfection.”

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end...”

“Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.”

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”

“If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the ...”