Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?

Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment.

The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.

It’s got to be some kind of cult. Anyone offers you Kool-Aid or a hot shower, say no.

It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing it down.

Show me what a man hates and I'll show you what he is.