Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who...
[Karen Lundegaard] was quite frail, debilitated by metastatic breast cancer, which she had long known she had but for which she had been unable to get adequate treatment because she lacked medical ins...
Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can.
God, life changes faster than you think.
And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing w...
You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.
Poetry. I read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Hirschfield. I like to read Billy Collins out loud.
All objects exist in a moment of time.
Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising.
The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night.
A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad f...
What should we do?, I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love. In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of everythi...
Why does love end so quickly and hatred last without end?
I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them.
Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief. In one small moment we had both lost the world, and there was no way to get it back.
They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.