Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies?

Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies? 'Sister Sonja often asked me, as though to understand the depth and breadth of human suffering would be enough to pull me outside of my own.

I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.

Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.

I was eleven, the idea of two identical digits in my age still new and spectacular and heartbreaking. The girls must have felt this. They must have known. Where had ten, nine, eight, and seven gone?

Creating a novel means moving into the past, the hoped for, the imagined. It is an emotional journey, fraught at times with characters who don't always do or say what a writer wishes.

I knew I was lost inside the world, watching it and trying to understand why too often I felt like I was standing just beyond the frame—of everything.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

Those who think fate is against them have already crucified themselves. They have already decided what fate should do with them

If you want a man who's commited, go look in a mental hospital.

...early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills.

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

I had to help to coax the performances and I really enjoyed that extra responsibility.

Why did God invent economists? To make weathermen feel good about themselves.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

Victory is a good wine; defeat is a good university!

A loving silence often has more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.