We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

What can we give a child when there is nothing left?

A new year can begin only because the old year ends.

We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.

If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.