“At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.”

“You can look at the words on this paper and, because they are the ones I am used to choosing, they will show you the shape of me. I am here to be read in the way you might read the impression of my weight in a bed after a still night, a restless night, a night not alone.”

“I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.”

“All that guides me is fear,And all that finds me is lossDeath defines which paths I crossIt is within the shadows that I stumbleAnd I am desperate without a voiceHere I am threatened by the resolve that you are my soulBut if my lies are the path that I have to wander because there is no choiceWill you love me still?In the darkness of the night when I wish to do nothing more than take flight?Will you hold me to this plane and ease the suffering and pain?When all you know is the truthAnd all they see is the liesWill I be the one you find, or the one you leave behind?Alone may be the only home I shall find”

“As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)”

“Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That’s because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness.”