The distance had been evaporated by humor

God answered prayers first by teaching the need to ask, second by using friends as holy messengers.

Alex had cooked, and coaxed, and helped Mark form borders around the shapeless days. Alex had given meaning to the word "servant".

For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present.

His eyes touched lightly, and passed on.

He used a minimum of words and no inflection whatsoever. It was a policeman's manner of speaking, direct and unadorned.

It was typical of the American to identify the one unfinished strand.

Mark felt eyes on him as tight as a sniper's aim.

Normal Iraqi etiquette was forgotten the moment drivers sat behind the wheel.

A poet is an unpaid laborer of a mine where he digs into the mountain to find rough diamonds. He then polishes them with his imagination and emotion to share with everyone.

People who want to climb mountains just like taking metaphors for real. So when I say I could murder for a mangosteen, I hope you don’t think I’m going to go out and do that.

True happiness is a state of being, not one of doing or having.

Being superintendent or the superintendent's chief of staff is important work, but there's no chance it's as difficult as being a teacher, and I hesitate to say that it's as important.

Medical Device technology is truly interdisciplinary.

So basically your plan is to flail about helplessly.

I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.

... inventions and purely human institutions.

Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.

Patriarchy is connected to greed, a symptom of a larger force that can only be dispelled through kindness and love. It's basic Buddhism.