Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.

Even as she began to slip into the gloaming of her life, the primal need to live…to survive...clawed at her soul.

I really am super lazy and doing long hair, especially mine, is a big pain in the butt. It's filled with cowlicks and kinks and curls and frizz - and it was taking too much time in the morning.

I agree with the (Supreme Court's) holding that racial discrimination in higher education admissions will be illegal in 25 years. They are illegal now.

No matter what the situation you're in, if you're raised in a loving environment, that's the most important thing.

You can't know who you are, as a nation or a people, unless you know where you've been.

There are certain tribes in the middle Sepik that eat raw bat. A certain kind of raw bat is a delicacy.

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

When I was little, there were three channels.

I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.

This army stays here until the last wounded man is removed. Before I leave them to the enemy, I will lose many more men.