“If you say, 'I really love this girl except for this one thing--if I could just change this one thing, then everything would be perfect,' then you've already lost her.”

“I'll tell you one thing. Being with you keeps a girl fit.' The Doctor beamed breathlessly at her. 'Fun to be with and good for you. Gotta be just what the doctor ordered.”

“Ah,' she says. 'But I know where your heart was. I know where it still is. And so do you.'He's gone,' I say. I lock the canvas into a hoop and hand it back to her. 'Here.'Then you must find him,' she says. 'You'll never stop loving him, you know. He'll never really be gone. My Gabriel is still here.'Your Gabriel?'Yes, my Gabriel. My husband.'You mean Lawrence,' I say. Lawrence, her husband who disappeared in a storm over thirty years ago.I mean my Gabriel. Everyone has one.' Ada takes my hand it puts it over her chest. 'Eva, my heart is ancient. But it still beats for him. Only for him.'I look into Ada's glistening eyes. She is telling the truth.You must find him.'I know that she is right.(Anxious Hearts)”

“I’m in my classroom and I’m looking at this girl, but all I can see is my dad on the ground, in front of The Wall, telling the truth, finally—his knees drawn and his chest heaving—and when people pass by they look the other way, except for this one lady who stops to give my dad a hug. She gets down on her knees to reach him, and now she’s crying with a stranger, and without asking I know it’s because she’s lost something, too, and I wonder if in comforting my dad she thinks she can find it again. Probably not. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It’d be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It’s really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we’ve already lost.”

“It was too late to pray, though. The sky was clear. The helicopters were gone. Too late for so many things. My fists hit the floor. My head hit the floor. My heart broke, hardened, and I lost my faith. That’s when the killing thoughts came. When it felt right to punish everyone who let this happen. I could start with Angel’s dad—but where would it stop?”

“I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we’d started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He’d go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I’d give anything to go back to the day before 9/11—but all we can do is move forward.”