Six months of looking for a job had made me an expert at picking out the people who, like me, were hurrying up to wait - in somebody's outer anything for a chance to make it through their inner doors to prove that you could type two words a minute, or not drool on your blouse while answering difficult questions about your middle initial and date of birth.

Why do I write? The truth, the unvarnished truth, is that I haven't a clue.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go... And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

The last time you're doing something - knowing you're doing it for the last - makes it even more alive than the first.

Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

The right woman is the one you can live with, not the one in your head.

It's as if I've arrived in a place where it's all spirit and no body -- an overwhelming sense of calm . . . I actually began to feel blessed.