“Character is too deep to catch in a single storyline. What really moves us - what makes the great stories, and there aren't so many of them - is the inevitability of character. The destiny. All we see is the arc. We'll never penetrate the secrets of the living, let alone the dead. I've spent my whole life trying to understand people, and all I've learned is that the deeper we look, the greater the mystery. At the core, each person is unknowable. Maybe that's the soul? I have to respect that. The mystery, in fact, is what I've loved the most, in people and in stories as well.”

“And both of them are crying then, caught again in the surprise of their grief. After a year of mourning, they know they will not die of it, but neither expects it to go away. Maybe neither of them would want it to go, because then what would be left?”

“If you aren’t nurturing your self, what kind of mother can you be, anyway?”

“... I've always said that we have to go on thinking anything's possible. Or else what's the point?”

“I loved Eddie. You know that, Stan. He'll be enshrined in my heart until I draw my last breath. But he can't be enshrined in my life. I've got to let go and move on. So do you.”

“To find someone suddenly gone, to see them one day and not know that this will be the last day you see them, to not have the moment register until hours, days later, or years is never easy. How we catch ourselves as life moves forward, thinking about that last moment and about what we might have done differently, if only we'd known.”

“The earth will support anything that supports life. What I have found after a soul retrieval is that one cannot "numb out" anymore. Each and every one of us must make personal and planetary decisions to stop abusing life. Whether a person a has to give up an abusive relationship, take a more active political role, or increase awareness of how we continue to abuse our environment, we all now have to be responsible. Being responsible means responding to what is needed. We find a need to wake up and change our reality to a stance of power...”