Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple.

There are times when silence is the most sacred of responses.

Death is by no means separate from life. . . . We all interact with death every day, tasting it as we might a wine, feeling its keen edge even in trifling losses and disappointments, holding it by the hand, as a dancer might a partner, in every separation.

The moment an individual can accept and forgive him or herself, even a little, is the moment in which he or she becomes to some degree lovable.

The future is religion and commerce, aphrodisiac and Benzedrine, a mother of mysterious comfort and a mistress of familiar ravishments ever on the verge of embracing or destroying us.

Mercy is a source of life because we breathe our own spirits through it into the lives of others.

Life does not hurt nearly as much if we have learned to listen to ourselves and to recognize how fully and richly we are trying to tell ourselves the truth.