We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society.
We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here,...
Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.
Niels Bohr wrote, The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.
It’s like singing on a boat during a terriblestorm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing
I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.
Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: you can’t short-circuit grief, or emptiness, and you can’t pa...
Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.
A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.
The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.
There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.
You lose the known package of your nice organized self almost instantly here. Overeating is one way back, the way it is at funerals at home.
We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching.
There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, Why on our hearts, and not in them? The...
My father treated them with respect and kindness, his main philosophical and spiritual position being: Don’t be an asshole.
I just gave up one day. Around the time the news about toxic shock came out. I thought, Fuck me, man, I give up. Come and get me.
I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.
I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects.
Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.
If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.