It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you… - Naomi Shihab Nye

So how can we continue to help-be tuning forks in some way? I guess that's the job of writers. We're tuning forks. We strike a note and it's not what we sing, so much, just that we strike this note-and then that note resonates in someone else's life, maybe they hear a harmonious note in their own lives.

When you liked somebody, you wanted to trade the best things you knew about. You liked them not only for themselves, but for the parts of you that they brought out. (p255)

those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like...How do they maintain any shred of dignity and balance? You know those are the courageous people to me. All the-- simple people of the earth who-- don't lose their sanity in the face of-- constant-- disease in the world they live in. Who keep sending their children to school, who keep combing their children's hair. How do they do that? (2002)