“Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying ju...”

“Here's what I think: when you're born, you're assigned a brain like you're assigned a desk, a nice desk, with plenty of pigeonholes and drawers and secret compartments. At the start, it's empty, an...”

“Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours.”

“Im so sorry, he said, because after Pamela died, he promised himself that if anyone told him the smallest, saddest story, he would answer, Im so sorry. Meaning, Yes, that happened. You couldn't bel...”

“All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When so...”

“Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”

“I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedn...”

“I met Ashley two weeks before I married him. It was a joke-the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. Once I was married, I didn't want to be a failure, so I stuck it out for six months, which was a...”

“There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.”

“He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.”

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Sh...”

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”