“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”

“We live in the shadow of crime with the unspoken understanding that we are victims.. of fear, of violence, of social impotence. A man has risen to show us that the power is, ans always has been, in our hands. We are under siege. He's showing us that we can resist.”

“And that's the tricky thing about life, really, that the things we want most will kill us.”

“Luce. We fight. I'm used to that. Sure, that fight was the scariest ass one we've ever had, but you're here now. That's all that matters. No matter how many fights we have, or how much they tip the Richter scale, none of it matters as long as at the end of the day, you're still with 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”

“In this way, little by little , moment by moment, life can slip by without us being fully here for it. Always preoccupied with getting somewhere else, we are hardly ever where we actually are and attentive to what is actually unfolding in this moment.”

“We don't need as much as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It's true what they say about the best things in life being free.”