It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

I always tell my students the same thing. And that's to live life, and to read very voraciously without any definite program. To travel, to meet people, to talk to people, to listen very carefully, and not interrupt, but listen to their own grandparents speak of their families.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.

The despairing soul is a rebel.