Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.

Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story.

Tom had traveled around the sun eleven times when the delivery truck brought his mother's newest fridge, but a number doesn't really describe his age.

Marx called religion an opiate, and all too often it is. But philosophy is an anaesthetic, a shot to keep the wonder away.

Columbus was the first to come to the east. Vikings don't count, and neither do all the people who were standing on the beaches and waving when he got here.

Your father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you.

Living is the same thing as dying. Living well is the same thing as dying for others.