“I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.”

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us…on the inside, looking out.

Isn’t it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we’re doing what we’re doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.

We spent our lives making livings.

Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?

She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.

Of course food has an important cultural use in families, but there are things that have more important cultural uses in families, and broadening the conversation out simply from what’s reasonable also allows in other things.

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.

Only humans can cry tears.

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside. If I have to bleed, I’ll bruise. If my heart starts going crazy, I’m not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. It doesn’t help anything. It just makes everyone’s life worse.

Sometimes you have to put your fears in order.

I watched the sheets breathe when she breathed, like how Dad used to say that trees inhale when people exhale, because I was too young to understand the truth about biological processes.

The mistakes I’ve made are dead to me. But I can’t take back the things I never did.