Dellarobia watched the void of this man where once there had been wonder, and she despaired of her future. In such a short time he had relieved her of a lifetime of illusions, and already she missed...

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.

Lately whenever I'd scratched somebody's surface I'd turned up a ghost story.

Oh, darling, I've been so miserable.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is...

Even when there's no interest on either side, one's coordination completely disappears in the presence of beauty. {Abigail's daughter, Jen}

Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro.

What the war did to dreamers

Eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time.

He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.

one of her recent letters asks, Is it hubris to believe we all live epics? {Perhaps it is, but I suspect she's not actually counting on me for an answer.}

I could have ripped at those pages with my fingernails in order to get all of the material inside me.

In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one...

What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: 'Hello, God. How are you? I'm Liz. It's nice to meet you.' That's right - I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though...

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straight way had been lost.

It was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with...

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

Father William has sent the Host in the Monstrance from the chapel and they put it on my prie dieu so I can fix my eyes on the body of the Lord. I have to say I am much less impressed by crucifixion...

The human heart is my territory. I write about love because it's the most important thing in the world. I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world.

Have you ever fought an opponent you had no defense against? Like a fire breather or an acid spitter? Once I faced a female with diamond skin, Nix said breathlessly. I was transfixed - even as she was...

He was a man who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them, but had never actually been introduced to one or shaken its hand.

Perhaps this was what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.

About that, little Lena, all wise and holy people have broken their heads over it. There is no happiness that lasts.

The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling.

total sense, but it was as

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on...

I will not say do not cry, for not all tears are bitter.

As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.

Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…

Well, and you may have lived in the courts of the Old Lord, and you were accounted beautiful, but I have been a man's wife and I have borne him sons, and you are still a slave.