“I thought I heard a cow mooing in Seese's back yard. Later on, later down the road, as they say, I would learn that this was the sound of the Rinpoche chanting some ancient prayer. But, at that moment, it sounded to me very much like a mooing cow.”

“If Christ's message could be distilled down to one line, that line would have to do with kindness and inclusiveness, not rules and divisiveness.”

“The frown again. So much contained there in the flex of a few muscles. All of history, it sometimes seemed to me. All of ours, at least.”

“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.”

“...it was like being in the start of an earthquake. Before that, whatever else happened, however bad things had been, you were at least sure the ground would stay still.”

“Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others”

“You keep telling yourself it will be different. Year after year, time after time, you keep telling yourself things might change. It's what makes people go back to people they shouldn't ever go back to.”