People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...

I've come to think that's what heaven is - a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on." ,

Before we leave the gravesite, Mary sings Mother's favorite gospel hymn ...Mary's lovely voice rises and lingers in the air, and by the end of the song most of us are crying. I am too, though I still don't know what those stars are meant to represent. My mistake, I suppose, is in thinking they should mean something.

Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel.

It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget.

My heart is shattered, an all that's left are jagged shards.

I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.

I couldn't have imagined how much more there was to lose.

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again.

I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go.

The smallest things get to her. It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't -- which, of course, is pretty often -- she is surprised and affronted.

The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud."It certainly helps," Vivian says.

I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an inva

Know what a symbol is?...Shit that stands for shit.

She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs o fill her bags and get the hell out of here.

To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.

She has never tried to find out what happened to her family — her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.

Do our natures dictate the choices we make, I wonder, or do we choose to live a certain way because of circumstances beyond our control?

You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day it'll become too small.""Then what?" I ask."Well, then you'll have to find a larger shell to live in."I consider this for a moment. "What if it's too small but you still want to live there?"She sighs. "Gracious, child, what a question. I suppose you'll either have to be brave and find a new home or you'll have to live inside a broken shell.

It is marvelous to be young on a big city street.

This life of ours can feel an awful lot like waiting.

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it's okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything.

He reaches over and touches my necklace. "You still have it. That gives me faith." "Faith in what?""God, I suppose. No, I don't know. Survival.

I want to say, Christina, that you are ... unusual. And somehow..." her voice trails off. "Your mind-- your curiosity-- will be your comfort.

How did I go from being the maiden in a fairy tale to a wretched old maids so quickly? It happened almost without my realizing it...

I have come to think that's where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past.

I want each day to last forever . . . It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I'm aware of how ephemeral it is.

If you really want to know me, I said, we'll have to start with the witches.

Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she’s come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think.

I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't - which, of course, is pretty often - she is surprised and affronted.

This is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.

That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised, but at least it's whole.

It's hard to say what's in my head. It's been a long time since anyone cared to ask.