“We carry secrets under our skin like shrapnel. Our surface wounds heal, but the damage festers underneath while we worry what tiny pieces will work their way to the surface for the world to see.”

“Reading is one way I cope. I go somewhere else for a while and submerge myself in the character's problems instead of my mine.”

“The broken are not always gathered together,of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. We speak of "senseless tragedies" but really: Is there any other kind? Mothers and wives disappear without a trace. Childeren are killed. Madamen ravage the world, leaving wounds immeasurably deep, and endlessy mourned. loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view. Maybe we chase them clumsily, across railroad tracks and trafficked streets; Over roads new printed with their foot steps,the dust still whirling in the wake of them; through impossibly big cities people with strangers whose faces and bodies carry fragments of their faces and bodies, whose laughter, steadiness, pluck, stuberness remind us of the beloved we seek. Maybe we stay put, left behind, and look for them in our dreams. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon. we can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way.”

“You can solve all the world's problems in a garden.”

“A lot of ballads are about the mistakes we inevitably make while trying to figure out how to live our lives.”

“Time heals wounds. This is true, though something like Time wears people out seems more accurate.”

“So young and yet already carrying a great burden on her shoulders. Do not worry, my dear, I will make sure you can protect yourself and others. Because you are our hope … sweet, darling … Arima.”