“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”

“It often feels like I'm not so much living for the present as I am busy making memories for the future.”

“ADMIRE means, I really look up to you and the way you are with your cookies. You remind me of what is good and possible in this world.”

“My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he did not have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower.”

“To get a true sense of the book, I have to spend a few moments inside. I'll glance at the first couple pages, then flip around to somewhere in the middle, see if the language matches me somehow. It's like dating, only with sentences......It could be something as simple yet weirdly potent as a single word (tangerine). We're meant to be, that sentence and me. And when it happens, you just know.”

“I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story.”

“A good soup attracts chairs. This is an African proverb. I can hear the shuffling and squeaking on the wood floor, the gathering 'round. This, from just five well-chosen words.”