Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.

Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.

The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.

And we stood like that. The joining of hands is highly underrated in the acts of intimacy. You kiss acquaintances or colleagues, casually to say hello or good-bye. You might even kiss a close friend chastely on the lips. You might quickly hug anyone you knew. You might even meet someone at a party, take him home and sleep with him, never to see him or hear from him again. But to join hands and stand holding each other that way, with the electricity of possibilities flowing between you? The tenderness of it, the promise of it, is only something you share with a few people in your life.

Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.

You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.