“When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.”

“Now looking across my latte at this confident smiling Starbucks employee I felt sorry for myself. She seemed carefree to me so young so full of options. Later I would learn that she had seen more hardship in her life than I could conceive of having seen in three lifetimes.”

“I had a perfect life in my reach once, and it was a crashing bore. Perfect is too clean, too easy. I don't want perfect any more than I want to be perfect. I want imperfect.”

“I haven't had a perfect life...but I have had a perfectly good life!”

“When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect so I stopped practicing.”

“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”