You can sit down and write three sentences — how long does that take, three minutes, five minutes? — and be giving yourself a very rare gift of liste… - Naomi Shihab Nye

just today, some students I was talking to in a Skype class in Kuwait — how much I love the modern world, that we can do these things.

"You will need to be brave. There are hard days coming. There are hard words waiting in people’s mouths to be spoken. There are walls. You can’t break them. Just find doors in them." (p258)

(And if you could choose something to carry you through, say, the next forty or so years, what would that be?) It's already been given to me. Listening and passing it on! I'm not one of those people who walks around all the time trying to feel worthy of all my life's gifts, although I know people like that and respect them. They're always asking Do I deserve this life I've been given?—I just don't think in those terms. Pass on something good and you'll deserve it. You don't have to be perfect. When I was turning forty, a few years ago, I thought a lot about energy. That was the issue, not age. Not all the dumb things that people want to focus on. To have a kind of vital sense of voice and story, life and word, the essential ongoing energy-I hope to keep inviting it in and not to be one of those people who goes to parties and talks about all the writing grants you've never gotten. Not to turn into one of those petulant, whiny writers. To maintain an energy and openness to what comes my way. That would be what I would hope for.