Ten watercolors were made from that star. - Joan Didion

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself.

...the revelation that the dream was teaching the dreamers how to live.

The death of a parent, he wrote, 'despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago...