“I wanted to protect him, which I was sure I could do, even if I could not protect myself.”

“Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.”

“We need much bigger pockets I thought as I lay in my bed counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. We need enormous pockets pockets big enough for our families and our friends and even the people who aren't on our lists people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for borough and for cities a pocket that could hold the universe.”

“I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?”

“I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn't recognize it. It's not that I didn't trust him, becuase I did. It's that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don't know how I could have tried harder.”

“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.I spent my life learning to feel less.Every day I felt less.Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

“I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”