“I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice.”

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”

“I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Mi...”

“I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp's Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt at the end, the way you might lean into a heavy wind that almost winds up sup...”

“I loved the idea that looking at a painting or listening to a concerto could make you somehow "transcend" the day-in, day-out bullshit that grinds you down: how in one instant of pure attention you...”

“That bar also delineated the realm of sweat and hourly wage, the working world that college was educating me to leave. Rewards in that realm were few. No one congratulated you for clocking out. You...”

“Promise YourselfTo be so strong that nothingcan disturb your peace of mind.To talk health, happiness, and prosperityto every person you meet.To make all your friends feelthat there is something in ...”

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used ...”

“He realized that when he had been afraid to change he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there”

“Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth moans with metaphors.”