“It was bewildering, the way that reality could be overtaken, wrestled down, and murdered by the sheer weight of possibility.”

“The thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity”

“Writing is the hardest way of earning a living with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.”

“It may be that what you could be haunts you. It is real. It is a weight you have to carry around. Each failure to become, to be, is a weight. Each state you could inhabit is a burden as heavy as any physical weight, but more so, because it weighs on your soul. It is the ghost of your possibilities hanging around your neck, an invisible albatros, potentials unknowingly murdered.”

“She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”

“The terrorists-those nineteen people, with hundreds or maybe thousands behind them-did the worst thing you can possibly imagine. But tens of millions people did the right thing...On 9/11, all the hatred and murder could not compare with the weight of love, of bravery, of caring.”