One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, 'Right. Now I understand how this is done.'

Sometimes she just stands and looks out the window where the people whose lives are intact enough not to have to take yoga live.

What did you do today, you’d say when you got home from work, and I’d try my best to craft an anecdote for you out of nothing.

What would it be like to make it so late into life before trouble hit? To always have someone on the front porch, calling you to dinner? The husband doesn’t have even a touch of this raised-by-wolvesness.

I slipped it into your papers to see if you would notice.” The Zen master Ikkyu was once asked to write a distillation of the highest wisdom. He wrote only one word: Attention.

She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts. A character flaw, not a virtue.

He asks me what my favored platforms are. I explain that I don’t use any of them because they make me feel too squirrelly. Or not exactly squirrelly, more like a rat who can’t stop pushing a lever. Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty!

Dizzying, this happiness.

Both have trouble working up the nerve to go into the Little Theater of Hurt Feelings.

They say when you’re lonely you start to lose words.