Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.

The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.

Be real and be unashamed, even of your faults. I do truly know what my husband is made of and vice versa.

To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.

For me, the short story is the depth of a novel, the breadth of a poem, and, as you come to the last few paragraphs, the experience of surprise.

And sometimes we cling because the memory is so painful that we can't stop visiting it and hoping to make it come out differently. The risk of letting go is that we have to confront our own selves and our own possibilities.

Aging is a chance to make what was good, great, and what was never so good, better...