“A Family Caregiver stays when the rest of the world walks out.”

“Doctors diagnose, nurses heal, and caregivers make sense of it all.”

“Forgiveness is a promise not a feeling. When you forgive other people, you are making a promise not to use their past sin against them.”

“From authors whom I read more than once I learn to value the weight of words and to delight in their meter and cadence -- in Gibbon's polyphonic counterpoint and Guedalla's command of the subjunctive, in Mailer's hyperbole and Dillard's similes, in Twain's invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world's colossal humbug . . . I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words."- from Harper's Notebook, November 2010”

“I once heard someone say that prayer is more than words. It's a stance you take, a position you claim. You throw your body against the door to keep the demons from advancing and stay put until they go away.”

“When in doubt, take the next step.”

“This is a book for those of you who want to be parents as well as people, who don't want to feel guilty about taking some time for yourself or your relationship (if you're even in one). It's for those folks who might, every once in a while, want to get drunk, and have sloppy sex without worrying that they're going to roll over on their kid because you all sleep in a "family bed" since that's how they do it in Taiwan and they have the highest math scores of any country on earth.”