"It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent."

"I worked at Salon.com way back when they started, and there's just unmeasurable value to distributing words online, too, but I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning."

"You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time."

"Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the tree calligraphic."

"Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are."

"Love is a reciprocal torture."

"I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged."

"I'm a big romantic, so I love guys who are romantic too."