Now we're like planets, holding to each other from a great distance. [...] Now we're hundreds of miles apart, our short arms keep us lonely, no one hears what's in my head. [...] It's March, even the birds don't know what to do with themselves.

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.

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

When you put a tremendous amount of love into your work, as in any relationship, you can't know - you can only hope - that what you're offering will in some way be received. You shape your love to artistic demands, to the rigors of your genre. But still, it's a labor of love, and it's the nature of love that you must give it freely.

Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.

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

...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.