Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?" I asked my medicine man the next day...So what can we do about the craziness of the world?" Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.

Whatever this feeling is - this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to.

Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.

Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.