“Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times--- his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?”

“What was the good at having an ideal if everyone is trying to beat everyone else at admitting how impossible it is to achieve it.”

“The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it. The great release of death, I thought, was not from the bondage to our lovely planet- who could ever wish to leave this extraordinary place?- but from one another.”

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and how can I regret what I am - though it often makes me sad.”

“And it seemed to me that longing was everything, longing is all we are.”

“...because it requires the total surrender of my will and finally, ultimately, the wholesale destruction of my ego. That is hard. It I'm going to another world, I cry out, I want to be ME in it.”

“To fear an inner life, she thought, was the greatest foolishness. It was like fearing a breath of air. Why did people find it harder to admit to a universe within than without? Why trust, for a moment, one's own absurd measurement of either?”