Wars break things; they break stories.

He’s an excellent listener. Most cats are. Except Siameses, the chatty little bastards. I.

Kilometers above, men who didn’t know her name wanted to kill her.

When I pick up a book and read it, I want to be transported. I want to be taken someplace that I didn’t quite know existed, so that by the time I close the book, and return to my own reality, my world is expanded and has become a little larger and a little more complicated.

We took a sledgehammer to the rules of English and reassembled the pieces into a language only we understood.

God had pulled her through a needle’s eye so narrow that this thread in front of them was all that remained.

There’s nothing quite like the sight of two dozen half-naked octogenarians. We enter the stage of life as dolls and exit as gargoyles.

And in the middle of the lake the woman I’d spoken with floated on her back, eyes closed, as if nothing in her many years had ever gone wrong.

He had memorized the entire Qur’an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes.

There were days when Earth’s small glories were luminous enough to dim church icons to duller golds. Diving from the roof into fresh snow. Throwing dishes from the window after Mother’s funeral. I have been blessed.