“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?""Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said....”

“Even if you are perfect the World isn't.”

“Human knowledge is never contained in just one person.”

“Literature not only illuminated another's experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection”

“I was searching for a vocabulary with which to make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining myself and inching forward again. The privilege of direct experience had led me away from literar...”

“Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and deat...”

“We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma ...”

“If only it were possible to love without injury fidelity isnt enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body...”

“She looks at the swings, and I can see shes imagining what theyd look like if the kids werent there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away,...”

“The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for tr...”

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

“...Nature has its unexpected and unappreciated mercies.”

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when its dark”

“She kissed their knife marred bodies, for every act of war has, at its heart, an act of mercy.”