Just as big cities can deplete you with their noise and crowds and sheer sensory overload, a hospital can exhaust you, as its changing faces and personalities blur and strangers wake you repeatedly.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

Who you are isn't tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.

Disassociating, mindfulness, transcendence-whatever the label-it's a sort of loophole in our contract with reality, a form of self-rescue.

Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits.

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative.

The knowing, I told myself, is only a vapor of the mind, and yet it can wreck havok with one's sanity.

It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.