As children, our protests availed little. As adults, the same.

We make some changes. But mostly changes make us.

My mother's mild-eyed sadness looks at me from the eyes of those I love.

We often mistake the original part of ourselves for a weakness.

In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.

Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac.

Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.