You couldn't have strength without weakness, you couldn't have light without dark, you couldn't have love without loss

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?

I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I should have named names.

I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.

There are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets--we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it's happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else--and language only takes you so far.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.