Such silly things, children -- and so embarrassing -- because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

...the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

I do love to sing. Had I a longer set of thigh bones and a sweeter voice, I should have loved to be a performer.

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

It’s the place of the story, beginning here, in the meadow of late summer flowers, thriving before the Atlantic storms drive wet and winter upon them all.