“You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again.”

“In a relationship the details are everything because they remind you - just when you need to be reminded the most - why you fell in love with someone in the first place.”

“That is when you need faith the most. Not when everything is going your way, not when you have much to be thankful for, but when there is darkness all around.”

“When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure from the inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything.”

“It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.”

“i think i love fire and ice by robert frost not because it deals with the end of all things, but because it deals with love. love can destroy all things when you have it, or it can destroy all things when you do not. it can either save you, or kill you. there are many kinds of love: the love with someone who fits you, and meets all of your needs. this can create a contentment that makes you happy and full. there is a more dangerous form of love. this love is kin to obsession, possession, and desire. you cannot breathe without their beings there. you cannot think, but of them. they plague you, and creep into everything you do until you despair of it. then one day you realize, not only did losing them create the most beautiful way of finding who they truly were, but it created you as you are. they made you something greater than you were. love is sickness, but it is the kind of sickness that makes life worth living. you realize that not only can you now live with them, but you can live without them, and you can stand beside them, while letting them have their freedom. The deep desire to hold them higher sits so deep in your soul that you would give your life to have them be no one other than the person you have come to see them as. faults and all, because no they aren't perfect, but who should be?”