...the words make our silences easier--they're the current that runs under them.

I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.

But even then I knew how it was going to be, I could feel the coming silence in the long, poisonous pauses that expanded as the night progressed.

The abundance of ordinary things, their convenient arrangement here, seemed for the moment a personal gift to me. As did my ability to notice this, to be grateful for it.

A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.

The word 'innocence' means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.

Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energy...And they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer. p220

One thing you learn early growing up a girl--people always talk, whatever you do, ' Glain said. 'What bliss it must be to be male.

With his trademark courage and conviction, President Reagan led us out of the Cold War, spreading his vision of freedom, resulting in the release of millions of people from the yoke of communism.

Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

Promise to think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best from yourself and others.

For me a true poem is on the way when I begin to be haunted, when it seems as if I were being asked an inescapable question by an angel with whom I must wrestle to get at the answer.

Lord Bacchus, do you remember me? I helped you with that missing leopard in Sonoma." Bacchus scratched his stubbly chin. "Ah... yes. John Green." "Jason Grace." "Whatever," the god said.

My parents were sixty years married.