Even the finest workman needs to inspect his work critically.

When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.

We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.

Almost anything can be dealt with if people are of good will and light hearts and strong values.

I'm good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it's a religious experience...Water, earth, fire-polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles-round and round-beginning and end-Alpha and Omega, amen.

We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts.