My heart is empty & my life has no value anymore. Each moment a thousand tears.

Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn't know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but its unaware of the boy who's come into the garden with a net. Three creatures—the cicada, the mantis and the oriole—all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming.

Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

Don't ever feel that you have to hide who you are. Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets like that.

The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child.