Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

... everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.