“In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.”

“Believe me, Doctor, if your life ends in suddenness you will be glad it did, and if it does not you will wish it had. You will want suddenness, Doctor.”

“- "I once knew a girl who loved tigers so much she almost became one herself. Because I am little, and my love of tigers comes directly from him, I believe he is talking about me, offering me a fai...”

“My grandfather would pet the dog, and, in a voice that made him sound like some kind of children's program puppet, he would say: "You're a dog! You're a dog! Where are you? You're a dog!" and the d...”

“In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.”

“...fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone, we're left with the concept, but not the true memory--why else...would anyone give birth more than once?”

“The strangest things in life, are often closer to reality, than reality would like to admit.”

“Every time you mistreat someone, you reveal the part of you that lacks love and needs to heal.”

“You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another,but in the end the listenin EXPOSES you even more th...”

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”

“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away a...”

“Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of makin...”