Responsible is Able to respond, Able to answer for the way we choose to live. There's only one person we have to answer to, of course, and that is ourselves.

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

I've learned that it is what I do not know that I fear, and I strive, outwardly from pride, inwardly from the knowledge that the unknown is what will finally kill me, to know all there is to be known about my airplane. I will never die.

Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being.

She didn't mean to be sexy that moment, but even a winter nightgown couldn't hide that lovely outline. When will I outgrow my simple-minded fascination with the form she had happened to choose for her body? Never, I thought

What a story that would make! How many men and women go through the same rivers, menaced by the same sharp clichés, the same jagged dangers that have threatened us! If the idea stands up, I thought, it would be worth uncovering the typewriter! How Richard-years-ago would have wanted to know: What happens when we set off searching for a soulmate who doesn't exist, and find her?

Children are not our property, and they are not ours to control any more that we were our parents' property or theirs to control.