A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection

It's my opinion that if you're trying to tell a realistic story that centers around realistic characters, you can't help but touch on important issues. Those issues are what make us human.

Remember this son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart. And, some men's minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly, no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.

I was pretty poor for a long time. Not *poor* poor. But college student poor. I lived for most of my adult life living on student wages, then after I got my MA and started teaching, I lived on teacher's wages, which isn't much better.

To be both rich and handsome was bad enough. But to have a voice like honey over warm bread on top of that was simply inexcusable.

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.

If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky.