“Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.”

“we need a mass of ancestors at our backs as ballast. Sometimes, we feel it's impossible to push into the future without such a weight behind us, without such heaviness to keep us steady, even if it...”

“We need a mass of ancestors at our backs like a balast. Sometimes, we feel it's impossible to push into the future without such a weight behind us, without such heaviness to keep us steady, even if...”

“In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.”

“a feminist is just someone who recognizes power structures that keep people from having the fullest life they can.”

“And she had pushed, or she hadn't. The result was all the same. There had been no forgiveness for her. But she'd been so very young. And how was it possible, how could parents do this? How could sh...”

“For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas....”

“It frightens me that I can't do anything sensible about it.""Are you scared that you'll wind up with a boring job where you have to see the same people every day and drink instant coffee?""I'm more...”

“She'd be dead before the memories and pain were finally gone; she knew it, accepted it, and dealt with it.”

“Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own tr...”

“Nature reflects the moods of the wizard.”

“My calling ties me to no office, makes me no man's slave, compels me to no action which my soul condemns. It sets me free from town life, which I loathe; and allows me to breathe clean air, to exer...”

“And you asked why people always expected you to smile in photographs. And I told you it was because they hoped that in the future, there would be something to smile about”

“Many cultures accept the faulty nature of memory. They know even the photograph only gets it halfway right. They believe there is only one way to bring the dead back to life, story.”

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”