My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.

When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recogonize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point taht wasn't there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn't new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

It's certainly my honor to be able to, hopefully, change the world a tiny bit, one mind at a time.

Remember when you were a little kid and you'd fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That's what I think it's like to die.