In many ways, constancy is an illusion.

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.

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.

... 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.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.