“It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life,from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.”

“I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.”

“No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.”

“I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be”

“Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you.”

“No one observed and beheld me, I observed and beheld myself; the invisible current went out and it came back to me. I came to love myself out of defiance, out of despair, because there was nothing ...”

“The smell of home was indistinguishable from the smell of leaving home: each inhalation a mix of familiarity and fear.”

“When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recogonize so well you could draw it by hea...”

“I never wanted to live in that place again, but if for some reason I was forced to live there again, I would never accept the harsh judgments made against me by people whose only power to do so was...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Why does everyone make fun of New Jersey? It's beautiful here," she said."We live in America.""What does that mean?""People like to judge without knowing.”

“Understanding trauma and that we each respond to it differently will help us be supportive and nonjudgmental toward each other.”