To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.

Some people have a gift for making you feel okay, just by the fact of their presence.

We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know we lived.

To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.

Every story is flawed, every story is subject to change. Even after it is set down to print, between covers of a book, a story is not immune to alteration. People can go on telling it in their own way, remembering it the way they want. And in each telling the ending may change, or even the beginning. Inevitably, in some cases it will be worse, and in others it just might be better. A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.

A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.

But there's no emergency kit for marriage. No neat plan you can turn to when the ground shifts beneath your feet.