She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d’Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.

It’s a good thing you and your pills weren’t around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You’d have drugged “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and...

Who knew that listening to a guy sleep could be so much deeper than sleeping with a guy.

I think your vision gets better as you get older.

Cry your grief to God. Howl to the heavens. Tear your shirt. Your hair. Your flesh. Gouge your eyes. Carve out your heart. And what will you get from Him? Only Silence. Indifference.

A new word. Bright with possibilities. A flawless pearl to turn over and over in my hand, then put away for safekeeping.

Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too.And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed...

He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.

I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.

There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.The memory of it makes me laugh now, but...

One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren’t for decent people.