Any given moment - no matter how casual, how ordinary - is poised, full of gaping life.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.

Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.

But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.

It is not a person’s depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.