When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. - Mary Oliver

Now and again there's a moment,
when the heart cries aloud:
yes, I am willing to be
that wild darkness,
that long, blue body of light.

I cherish two sentences and keep them close to my desk. The first is by Flaubert. I came upon it among Van Gough's letters. It says, simply, 'Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation.

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?