Well, most women are full to the brim, that's all...We are, most of us, ready to explode, especially when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with "Mommy" embroidered over the left breast, over the heart...If a stranger had come up to me and said, "Do you want to talk about it? I have time to listen," I think I might have burst into tears at the relief of it.

Do you think that people ever really do believe they will die, that the world will just go along as always without them? I wonder if we aren't all a little surprised at the moment of crossover, if we don't look back over our shoulders saying, Now hold on.

Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.

Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.

There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if many of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens.

Outside, the rain sometimes comes down so hard, we have to talk louder, and it feels like a miracle that the roof holds. It makes for a coziness and a gratefulness, too, that you have the choice to not be out in it. You can sit at the table and look out the window and not have to feel what you see.

I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.