“Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”

“What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones. ”

“It seems to me that we cant explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we cant fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer ...”

“I had not said anything about what had happened the day beforeabout being scared down to my very bones when I thought they had left me. I don't know what came over me. Ever since my mother left us ...”

“A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.”

“You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.”

“It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”

“It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.”

“Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.”