“Discover that we are capable of solitary joy and having experienced it, know that we have touched the core of self.”

When it’s gentle, you go sailing, have a picnic, take a swim.

Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn’t know it then.

The hot, moist smell of babies fresh from naps.

Grief is like the wind. When it’s blowing hard, you adjust your sails and run before it. If it blows too hard, you stay in the harbor, close the hatches and don’t take calls.

From beginning to end this is a wet and blood smeared voyage, this begetting and birthing and moving away.

A red brick Presbyterian church… captured by kudzu vines as surely as a butterfly in a net.

Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart.

In love we often doubt what we most believe.

What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?

Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.

Your body must become familiar with its death – in all its possible forms and degrees – as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

Have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.

You can’t always just put color filters in 80s aerobic videos or take stuff from public-access and look at it in this very ironic, self-conscious way. That only takes you so far.

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, “I have to write some of my kind of songs now.”

Those with a high level of confidence may have as many or more weaknesses than those with low self-esteem.