“Or he’d watch the news: more plagues, more famines, more floods, more insect or microbe or small-mammal outbreaks, more droughts, more chickenshit boy-soldier wars in distant countries. Why was everything so much like itself?”

“More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.”

“Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.”

“More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?”

“Life Stories: Why hunger for these? One, it fits a hunger. Maybe it is more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge of the life, no matter who lived it...”

“I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.”

“We understand more than we know.”