An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it — I breathed it into my ears. - William Stafford

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why. If you do not have things right in your life you will be overwhelmed: you may be heroic, but you will not be wise. If you have things right in your life but do not know why, you are just lucky, and you will not move in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

In every town we lived in, there was one great big door ready to open for anyone — the library. And I never met a library I didn’t like.

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or the silence after lightning before it says its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head — that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone. The whole wide world pours down.