"Bernier turned in her chair, smiled, and shook their hands. Dana’s heart skipped a beat as she stood inches away from one of New York’s most glamorous and adored women."

"I could be listening to Painted Red weave the stories of the saints in her rich roomy voice, and beginning to see how all those stories were in some way one story: a simple story about being alive, and being a man; a story that, simple as it was, couldn't itself be told."

"Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...Simplify, simplify!"

"She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names."

"There is no night porter wandering about in King's. The authorities pay you the compliment, ugly gate-crasher, of treating you as a grown-up. And since we are not grown-up you and I, we will perform our midnight frolics as the inmates burn the midnight oil."

"Death changes us, the living. In the presence of death, we become more aware of life.... It can inspire us to decide what really matters in life--and then to seek it. (Founder of M.A.D.D.)."

"Amanda choked on a sob. She looked like she didn’t know what to do. For the first time, Stacey realized this woman was a human being, and sometimes she felt lost."

"The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief."

"He held up a finger and went to the hallway, where he tripped over Blotchy, and then over the two monster cats madly pursuing Blotchy. Swearing, he leaned over the landing and called to the guard that unless the kingdom fell to war or his daughter was dying, he better not be interrupted until further notice."