“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

I felt shame for living in a nation of unprecedented prosperity-a nation that spends a smaller percentage of income on food than any other civilization has in human history-but in the name of affordability treats the animals it eats with cruelty so extreme it would be illegal if inflicted on a dog.

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster’s paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

She extended a hand that I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

There are only some many times you can utter “It does not hurt” before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.

We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.

While it is always possible to wake a person who’s sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.

You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter,” I told her, and she said, “Then I would never utter another word again.” “You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do.” “Then I would never do anything again.

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.

There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Maybe the most perfect words I’ve ever heard, beauty and sadness, are these three. Not, I love you. But, Let it be.

If only you knew all the gifts that you bring to others. You would never feel sad again.

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

A good cry can be wonderful sometimes, and sadness is nothing more than love announced. Sadness and Unhappiness are not the same thing, and it is good to remember that. And there is this: sadness cleanses the heart.

Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind?

That preaching is sadly defective which dwells exclusively on the mercies of God and the joys of heaven, yet never sets forth the terrors of the Lord and the miseries of hell.

The question I love to get asked is: ‘What’s the hardest part of your job?’ And literally, the answer is probably real sad, but it’s to just to be me. Like, it’s really hard, because I think people, you know, have a set idea of what a pop star should be.

Everyone has sadness-I just get mine out in my music so that I can laugh and joke and flirt with you!