Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Age is an accumulation of life and loss. Adulthood is a series of lines crossed.

We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.