Quotes from book

Fugitive Pieces

“There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief… is the weight of a sleeping child.”

“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.”

“Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall. In their rings we read ancient weather—storms, sunlight, and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.”

“I'm naive enough to think that love is always good no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances.”

“Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!”

“Any given moment—no matter how casual, how ordinary—is poised, full of gaping life.”

“Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.”

“Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.”

“Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.”

“… when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.”