It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person. Never had he received such kindness. Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spend the rest of their lives remembering.

The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly is always the love that is not returned.

He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.

That night, in my sister's bed, I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of our father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I'd never thought about him as a child, I had never asked him about the war; I'd only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalogue of my mistakes.

People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me.

...writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn't have to be successful to be thrilling.

I think that she is everything I have ever loved about our religion distilled down to fit into one person, everything about the faith that is both selfless and responsible.

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.