“She can look at you and make you feel like youre the only one in the world. Even if its not true, she can make you feel that way. And with her child, it would be true. She would look at her child f...”

“We play phone tag, back and forth, the kind of tag where it's clear we're avoiding each other, where no one wants to be touched, tagged, you're it”

“She takes another sip of her drink. She looks around the bar. I look at the fine muscles in her neck, at the two points of her clavicle. Her grief has not so much changed her as stripped her down, ...”

“Her grief has not so much changed her as stripped her down, stripped her body and her face.”

“He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. ...”

“And I'd noticed her eyes, the lightest blue, and alive, moving here and there and then staring straight on. And now there's darkness under her eyes like she hasn't slept well for too many days, alm...”

“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people weve never met.”

“Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide hijackers learn that the huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have ...”

“In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need th...”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

“If you want to know what God thinks about any situation in the world, think like a parent.”

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”