I love this child. Red-haired - patient and gentle like her mother - fey and funny like her father. When she giggles I can hear him when he and I were young. I am part of this child. It may be only because we share genes and that therefore smell familiar to each other.... It may be that a part of me lives in her in some important way.... But for now, it's jelly beans and 'Old MacDonald' that unite us.

Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.

Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors.

Clean up your own mess.

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there at the sandpile at Sunday School.

Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.

Never forget that music is too important to be left entirely in the hands of professionals.