“Rosie [her teenage daughter] had a secret life now, was putting together her own tribe, finding her identity there, and it was great to see, and it hurt like hell.”

“Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.”

“The speaker at the meeting, a blonde woman in a fine tailored suit, shared how alcoholism had stolen her own childhood, and had now come back for her child.”

“One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness”

“Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.”

“I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)”

“I prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me--life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, thee the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise an extremely sensitive young girl, and my heart remained hardened toward her. [p. 46]”