“Love, I have always known, is an evolutionary trait. It is a delicately tuned, intricate, sensitive impulse, but a trait nevertheless, a reaction honed by millions of years of an ever-changing and complex mating instinct.”

“Do you think people love having jobs, Sylvia asks Peter in because they offer a condoned but false responsibility that masks, for at least eight hours a day, true responsibility?”

“A person's value is attached to a variable exponent.”

“Faith is an admirable trait. It's good to have faith in another person. But when faith is used as a substitute for reality, then it becomes a crutch for refusing to deal with that reality.”

“I quickly discovered three distinct traits about my tablemates:They hit each other a lot.They swore a lot.They belched a lot.”

“I'll probably regret saying this, but...for me kin have always been bad news. Warmth and hope came from strangers as they became friends, mentors, allies, etc., while family is the shared trait of those who diminish my happiness and augment my griefs. I know in my bones that blood is not thicker than water.”

“...when one considers that there are more than 750,000 police officers in the United States and that these officers have tens of millions of interactions with citizens each year, it is clear that police shootings are extremely rare events and that few officers--less than one-half of 1 percent each year--ever shoot anyone.”