Keep your secrets Keep your silence It is a better gift than truth

None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.

I know Christianity; and I know I have to move away from it and approach Jesus Christ on my own. I have to talk to Him directly and seek His guidance and protection as I seek to make my commitment to Him central to my life.

In these last few days, we were close because we were both mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that’s all changed. You have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I still see death when I look at you. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mine

The highest truths a person could discover were rooted in the natural world.

As if it were our very birthright, which we could not come to grasp the meaning of until this time of middle life when we looked on only as many years ahead as already lay behind us.

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.