“It is one of those rare moments when we seem to forget everything,forget this insistence on living in the moment.”

“The fragile and ancient hurt that seeps out of adults when they speakof wronged childhoods.”

“Don't go back to teaching - it sucks the marrow from your sould andyour wisdom fades into the brick brains of those who can not learnwhat they do not know. Teaching is a wall falling into a vermilionsea. What I like most about you is your yellow flaring laugh and itlashing joyfully against the wind of your anguish.”

“- It was a joke. Remember irony.- Sister of bitterness?”

“Truth was such a tricky thing when it came to children. When was it good medicine and when was it poison”

“It matters what myths we tell ourselves -- which ideals we choose to honor.”

“In many ways we were what Billy and Ruth Graham called 'happily incompatible'.”