“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.”

“When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.”

“Of all the virtues, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.”

“Never talk yourself out of knowing you're in love or into thinking that you are.”

“Here we are - despite the delays, the confusion, and the shadows en route - at last, or for the moment, where we always intended to be.”

“People take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that.”

“I come from a culture of handwringers, vengeance seekers, people who name children after ancestors by rote -- first child, paternal grandfather, second child, maternal, and on and on and on.”