“You'll have to make do with the story instead, pieced together from the scraps of old lives. That is all I have.”

“Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them.”

“What if I mess up?""Oh, you will. You'll mess up, you'll make mistakes, you'll break things. Some you'll be able to piece together, and others you'll lose. That's all a given. But there's only one thing you have to do for me.""What's that?""Stay alive long enough to mess up again.”

“She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.”

“Dear Lord...patch this work. Quilt us together, feather-stitching piece by piece our tag-ends of living, our individual scraps of love”

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing all the way. Just know you'll have to live with all the choices that you make.”