“I manage a toast to the Christmas treeand one to the sweet absurdityin the miracle of the verb to be.Lucky you, lucky me.”

“He lives all alone now, in the home they bought,and finally seems to be managing, more or less.Not the way he was, of course, with her,who lives alone now, too, at the same address.- Separatio in Loco”

“Every word you add dilutes the sentence.”

“Wherever it left us, we were barely learning to live with itwhen here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williamsto tell us that no one has ever been lovedthe way everybody wants to be loved,and that's hard. That's hard.--last stanza of How Step by Step We Have Come to Understand”

“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”

“I don't know. I never heard anything about her again after I landed her man," she said, peering back at me. "She was drowned in my wake. You better hope you can swim if you go up against me." This bitch was lucky I was letting her leave in one piece. "Like a damn fish.”

“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.”