This is a bad story.” “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.” “No, you should,” I say. “But—” “I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.

The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.

I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.

I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.

When I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other’s head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.

And the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic. There is nothing I would trade them for. There is no place I would rather have seen.

She wept with shame for her lack of will and with fear for a love she couldn't control.

Being who you are is a lot easier than faking it.

When you have a valid opinion around, it takes a lot of the pressure off.

Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?'

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.

What is so real as the cry of a child?

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.