Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you to soften, can wake you up. - Anne Lamott

Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn't, they would get a new one.

He lost the great big outward thing, the good- looking package, and the real parts endured. They shine through like crazy, the brillian mind and humor, the depth of generosity, the intense blue yes, those beautiful hands.

"I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame until I'd remember that wonderful line of Blake's- that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love- and I would take a long deep breath and force these words out of my strangulated throat: "Thank you.