The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, "Did I do what I set out to do?"

I'm a witch woman--high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts...I have the magic of words. The power to charm and kill at will.

When you have your heart broken wide, you are also open to things of beauty as well as things of sadness. Once people are not here physically, the spiritual remains, we still connect, we can communicate, we can give and receive love and forgiveness. There is love after someone dies.

I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.

The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow.

We tend to think of orphans as being the protagonist of stories we read when we're kids, and yet here you are: you're an adult, you're supposed to manage, you're supposed to get over it, you're supposed to go on with your life, and you feel like a lost child.