All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I've been so busy, and I don't understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.

The whole city stopped - And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again.

There are so many people in the world, and I want to know them all but I don’t even know my next-door neighbor’s name.

I'm surprised, but I'm glad, I realise that this is what i wanted that night last week, to simply make a connection and keep hold of it.

He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly. She was crying with relief he says, it was like as if a door had been unlocked and she'd been let outside, she said to me I'm safe now. He waits, and he says this kid, when it's born, you mustn't ever let it think it's anything other than a gift and a blessing, do you hear me?

If nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.