There's a widespread notion that children are open, that the truth about their inner selves just seeps out of them. That's all wrong. No one is more covert than a child, and no one has a greater need to be that way. It's a response to a world that's always using a can opener to open them up to see what's inside, wondering whether it ought to be replaced with a more useful sort of preserves.

The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

Under certain circumstances the fateful decisions in life, sometimes even in matters of life and death, are made with an almost indifferent ease. While the little things-for instance, the way people hang on to what is over-seem so important.

Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

..That's where we humans make a mistake. We don't see the utterly amazing when it comes to us disguised as the ordinary.

I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.