“Was there anything quite so painful, so fraught with the possibilities of hurt, as gift giving within a family?”

“Soon would come the night in which there was no more work not the work of the hands, nor the work of the mind, nor the work of the heart.”

“Still, for all that, her life had lacked passion. The demons had never come for her.”

“I think good conversation is really the best form of sex.”

“Were archaeologists really such a sex-starved lot as all that? Did pigs really sweat?”

“Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.”

“Your heart swallowed me like a well and I will never be able to climb out. I fell. I fell into your infinity. And my inability to free myself will doom your life.”

“How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.”

“I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom...”

“I remembered Patels words, Surrender is not giving up, it is worship. Show me how to step, I said, so that it pleases you. Make me one with you and also this land. Be with me.”

“There is too much at stake for us to surrender to the politics of polarization.”

“Always say yes to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now ...”