“I fill the shadow of the girl you want, a placeholder to the one I know you’d rather – I’ll do for now, but not forever.”

I wished to every fountain, prayed to every god but some futures are set in stone – so here we go again.

So long as we share a sky, in this life and any after – I’ll find my way back to you.

We didn’t know it was simpler, did we? Those days of sunburnt youth and carefree adventure. Knowing that indestructible optimism would waver with experience – would I have gripped it a little tighter? Held on a little longer?

In the pale light of a setting sun – I’ll hold your hand and promise to love you more, on the days that you forget to love yourself.

The rain reminds me of his voice, a perfectly composed melody in the sky. Each drop that falls against my window, a dedication to the oceans I would cross – just to sit beside him.

I think the scars that you left me, they remind me you were real.

I’m scared of mediocrity, of scribing my soul on fading pages, each destined to the fate that met those before it – gently laid to rest in a growing pile of unwanted words.

Words hold little scope, for a love that stretches far beyond the limitations of language.

Spirits dance on a velvet night, the sky it’s deepest black. In restless sleep and twisted dreams, they find themselves alive.

Your arms around me – and for the first time in years, I feel like I am home.

And in the end when the money is gone – will you still stay it was worth it.

And when I imagine my home – above all else, I’ll always think of you.

In the end it’s all the same – the hearty fire or the damp earth. I pray I’m not alone.

I feel like I’m on fire, fighting for a moment on respite – I’m not placing bets.

I read that good things take time – but one look at him, and I knew I could never love someone more.

The bond of friendship as tight as any lover – where shoulders carry shared burden, a devotion unmatched by any other.

Pipe-smokers spend so much time cleaning, filling and fooling with their pipes, they don’t have time to get into mischief.

I think I know how to raise a kid. You just play catch with ’em. You just talk about life, and you distract them by throwing the ball. They don’t even notice that you’re filling up their heads with your theories.

There’s no tiling moral about beauty.

Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.

Even if it’s something so simple as filling myself up with uplifting meditation so it’s easier to spread kindness and love by the time I walk out my door and enter the world.

The nice thing about being on stage is it’s not that I know what to do, but I have a very clear feeling that anything I do is OK. All I’m up there to do is express how I feel. Any way I choose to do that is fine.

Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

Fling out, fling out, with cheer and shout, To all the winds of Our Country’s Banner!