"All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write."

"I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community."

"Part of me is drawn to the nature of sadness because I think life is sad, and sadness is not something that should be avoided or denied. It's a fact of life, like contradictions are."

"I am like the water that runs over me, immune to permanence, recycling endlessly. I am water; I am life. The form may change, but the substance stays the same. Strike me down and I will rise again. Vincit qui patitur."

"In life, there are dreary, empty days and there are exciting, full days. You will experience both, for you cannot choose one above the other. May your full days be many."

"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle."

"Logic and reason are the naphthalene balls we use to pack them away into a sandook called 'Someday'. But when that day comes we are too old, too poor, too tired or too lazy."

"The cancer bubble. It's almost like he's not here. Like he's on pause, and my life with him is on pause, and we're just waiting to see if somebody is going to hit play again or just stop the thing entirely."