To love pleasure takes little. To love truly takes a hero who can manage his own fear. - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When we accept our own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and we are no longer poignantly aware of it anymore, but neither would we forsake it or disclaim it either. Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she sleeps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.

Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.

Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one.20 To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily.