“My teacher saw that I loved reading, and she gave me books, even grown-up books, and I read them. And then later in high school I still read books, when my homework was done, in the warm school. But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone. This is my point.”

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.”

“But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

I have said it before: It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.

“You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

“Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.”

The past poisons the now. Forever turning things over means dying a little.

Loss, pain, the unbearable can make a person experience and feel things that are beyond the imagination. When someone has gone, they’ve gone. Except in the minds of those who remain. And the mind of just one man is much bigger than the universe

One day you’ll have whatever it is you’re now so confusedly seeking. That kind of calm that comes from knowing oneself and others. But you can’t rush the arrival of that state of mind. There are things you only learn when no one teaches them. And that’s how it is with life. There’s even more beauty in discovering it for yourself, in spite of the suffering.