It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.
I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.
You want a letter from me? she asked.
I told her yes.
Oh, God bless you, she said.
The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.

Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live life.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.