I couldn't blame anyone for what was in me, because I am, like everyone, populated entirely by myself.

Why were we never together anymore, just alone in each other's vicinity?

I wasn't sure if it was safe for me to be sharing time and space with other people, who all seemed so much gentler and safer and less of a secret to themselves than I felt I was.

I knew that my husband was a song that I had forgotten the words to and I was a fuzzy photograph of someone he used to love.

That's the thing about fiction, that you live in it totally for a little while, but you must forget it, sometimes totally forget it, in order to go about the rest of your day.

But we always avoided talking about these things—difficult things—and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives.

Lately, I couldn't remember those years, as if childhood was a movie I'd only seen the previews to.

None of us know how to fix ourselves, at least not entirely, not well enough.

That boy never seemed to smile and he wore long sleeves year-round, and I was not so different from him—we were both unable to get near the real life in life.

Everyone wants to feel like they could destroy a small-to-medium-to-large part of someone who loves them.

I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face—not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt.

But all our differences hardly measure up to the values we all hold in common...

A tuna can only boast in a pond, but a whale can boast even in the ocean.

I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend [with dignity, with honor].

Government is an art, not a science, and an adventure, not a planned itinerary.

The more that you bypass of your own mechanisms, the more in your self that will come apart.

While the past is the past, it often affects our decisions later on in life.

I learned a lot from both, initially Jewish and Muslim theologians that had been missing, perhaps from my rather parochial Catholic upbringing.

If I do something stupid, which is pretty much the whole time, I hate it. I just hate it

I am a proud Christian who has been greatly tutored by Hindus and Buddhists and Sufis and others, and I stand and I speak from that place.

I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.