“When we sing, I am one of many, and the individual me evaporates. I am one of 23 university choir members. Not a professor. Not an American. Not a 46-year-old in the midst of twentysomethings. Not a woman trying to outpace the aspects of self she has yet to make oeace with. I am simply what we all are--another voice, a set of lungs, some vocal chords and someone who finds joy and comfort in singing. But when the music stops, so does the we. The union dissolves. The silence transforms first person plural into first person singular.”

“Gjerji raises his hand. In English he says, "I like to tell in the words of a great American philosopher what freedom is.""Say it in your language to your peers," I urge.Gyerji makes his statement. The class grows silent and thoughtful; there is much nodding. Twain perhaps? Emerson? Diana sidles up and whispers in my ear. "He says to them that freedom is a word when nothing is anymore able to be losed."Janis Joplin, de-syntaxed.”

“He gave me a gift, a surprise. It was my first present in this place so far from home.”

“The people and circumstances around me do not make me what I am, they reveal who I am”

“And maybe love is terrifying. I'm terrified now, but not in the way she would think.I'm terrified because I hate who she is and what she's done, I do, and yet there is still something strong and powerful between us, some kind of deep, primal bond that won't end, won't snap or break or change, it just remains there inside me, as sold and factual as my blood and bones - she is my mother, I am her daughter - and I don't know what to call it because it doesn't feel like love, not the good kind I felt for Ellie, with all my heart, but instead an instinctual pull that's been there from the beginning, drawing me back to her again and again, the woman who has hurt me like no one else ever could, and now she's dying and the bond is still here, inside me, and I won't call it love or hate because emotions has nothing to do with the fact that she is my mother and I am her daughter, and we will be connected in that way forever.”

“I am a law student in my first year at the law, and there are many moments when I am simply a mess.”

“Someone has said, “A friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am.” Accepting this as one definition of the word, may I quickly suggest that we are something less than a real friend if we leave a person the same way we find him.”