The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

...a disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.

... as we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. ... We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.